But every time I watch him, my jaw just keeps hitting the floor. The man makes the sport look so easy and graceful, even though I know it's not. Almost every time you think someone's going to beat him....BANG!....he brings the awesome shot and hits a winner. I just love it. If I could play half as well as him I'd be the number one Junior tennis player. But I just finished watching the Men's Singles Final of the Australian Open and I'm just in awe. He was playing the British Andy Murray and was up 2 sets to none at the start of the third set. Somehow, Murray breaks his serve and gets up 5 games to 2. [Now, for those who don't understand the scoring in tennis, the professional men play best 3 of 5 sets. A set is won when one of the players wins six games by at least two (so the score could be 6-0, 6-1....6-4). However, if the score is 6-5, the players must play another, and it can end at 7-5, or if it ends up at 6-6 they play a tiebreaker to seven points.] Anyways, in the third set, he is down 2-5, which means that Murray only had to win one more game to win the set. So basically Federer's beat. But somehow, he comes back to win not one, not two, but three games! Later, in this set, the men are tied at 6-6 and they go to the tie breaker. Now, a long tiebreaker is anything past 7 points, and the longest ever was 19-17, but Federer and Murray went to 13-11! It was crazy, every time I thought for sure Federer would lose, he pulled out this amazing shot and I was just like OH MY GOSH! If you didn't see this m
atch, I highly recommend going online and watching just the third set. It's crazy.
atch, I highly recommend going online and watching just the third set. It's crazy. But what I like about him, besides his amazing athletic talent, is his focus under pressure.
It didn't matter that the entire stadium was rooting for his opponent for the entirety of the match. He didn't care that he was down 5-2 in the third set. All that mattered to him was keeping his head on straight, not letting the pressure get to him, and playing some good tennis. Sometimes I can get to a state of mind like that, but I have to tell myself to stop thinking and play the game. If I don't I get caught up in all the pressure and all of the expectations instead of putting all of my attention on what's most important. Another cool thing about him is that he's very humble when he wins. In his acceptance speech, he told Murray that he was "too good of a player not to win a grand slam. Don't worry about it." Come on. How many people can say that to their opponent and actually mean it? He's just great. So for anyone who thinks he's stuck up, 1) he's not and 2)if he was, he'd have a pretty good right to be so for being ranked number one in the world for 237 consecutive weeks!.
Yay Rodger Federer!
Fun Fact About Roger Federer #136
- He speaks 4 languages (Swiss German, German, French, and English) fluently, which is what I want to be able to do someday. Just another reason why he's so cool :)
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