Sports

What is it about watching Federer play?

By Carol ⋅ August 26, 2006 ⋅ Email This Post Email This Post ⋅ Print This Post Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

I have enjoyed playing and watching tennis being played since I was in my early teens. I still vividly remember watching my tennis idol, Tony Roche playing at Forest Hills when I was fifteen. As I recall Poncho Gonzales was also playing one of his last matches there. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my teenage years. I’m sorry to say that I haven’t been to a professional tennis tournament since that one, but I have watched many hours of professional tennis over the past forty years or so. I have had a couple of other ‘idols’ since Tony; Ivan Lendl, and Andre Agassi, but I have never been as inspired by a player as I am by Federer. I am almost addicted to watching him play (I seriously considered downloading the videos of all of his 2006 Wimbledon matches from the ppv sight they had set up for that event…but I thought that would be going a bit too far).

So when I saw this blog post, and the related article, Federer as Religious Experience in the New York Times Play Magazine, that the blogger is commenting on, I felt somehow comforted and validated (maybe I’m not quite as nuts as my spouse thinks I am). I had never gone so far as to equate the experience I have when Federer does something so unexpected, beautiful, and breathtaking that I lose all sense of reality as we know it for an infinite instant in time, as “religious”, but this article caused me to reconsider. I don’t really consider myself to be religious, but rather, spiritual, and I would have to agree that watching Federer play, when he is playing at the top of his game against a worthy opponent such as Nadal or Agassi, is profoundly spiritual for me for reasons I cannot begin to explain. I know he is but a mortal man, but such beauty in coordinated mind and motion is surely a reflection of the innate beauty in all of us.

If you enjoy tennis, and like Federer, you owe it to yourself to read this articulately written article.

US Open starts on Monday!!

Peace & Joy,
Carol

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