Saturday, December 17, 2005, 04:56 PM EST
[
Tennis]
There is a scene in the movie "Supersize Me" where director Morgan Spurlock shows pictures of famous individuals to a group of children in order to determine which personality was the most recognizable. In this "test", more children were able to identify Ronald McDonald than other figures such as George Bush, George Washington and Jesus Christ.
If you were to perform a similar demonstration with adults, testing the average sports fan's knowledge with photos of the best athletes playing today, perhaps the greatest athlete of them all would go virtually unrecognized. And that man would be 24-year-old Roger Federer.
Roger Federer isn't just the premier player in men's tennis. Nor is he simply the best player in an individual sport. He is the most dominant athlete in professional sports today, and it's not even close. Yet, remarkably enough, very few people could pick him out of a police lineup.
Most of us are amazed at the dominance of Tiger Woods on the PGA Tour, but the fact of the matter is that Woods only wins about a third of the tournaments that he plays in. By comparison, Roger Federer won 11 of the 15 events that he entered this year, with a remarkable match record of 81-4. 95% of the time that he stepped on a tennis court in 2005, he walked off victorious. Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that, going into the season-ending Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai, Federer was riding an unprecedented 24-match unbeaten streak in tournament finals. But since professional tennis is (for the most part) relegated to outlets such as the USA Network and ESPN2, no one really knows who he is, despite the fact that he's been the #1 ranked player in the world for the past 100 weeks. In today's information-crazed world, it's amazing how such dominance can fly below the radar.
In tennis, great players are defined by how well they perform in majors, and Federer easily passes the litmus test on that account. For the second straight year, he captured both the Wimbeldon and US Open titles, and has won five of the last eight Grand Slam events. Two of the four losses he suffered this year occurred in the semifinals of the French and Australian Opens, so it isn't a stretch to imagine that Federer could very well have had all four Grand Slam titles sitting in his trophy case at the end of 2005.
After their epic battle at the US Open in September, Andre Agassi - who has battled against such heavyweights as Ivan Lendl, Pete Sampras and John McEnroe - all but called Federer the best player he's even faced. Andy Roddick, the future of American tennis, said in reference to Federer: "I don't know many people in history who could beat him." Even McEnroe himself has been quoted as saying: "If I'm in the same company as Roger Federer, I can feel pretty good about that. He's the best player I've ever seen play." Simply put, Roger Federer is a once-in-a-generation talent worthy of our admiration and praise. Too bad nobody's paying attention.
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