Others Are Trying to Speak Federer’s Language

By HARVEY ARATON
Sports of The Times
July 7, 2007

Wimbledon, England

When it comes to being mouthy, Roger Federer isn’t John McEnroe, but when the world’s No. 1 player is absent for a week from the most important tournament on the tennis calendar, one he is trying to win for the fifth straight year, there is a lot of catching up to do.

After dispatching Juan Carlos Ferrero in their four-set quarterfinal yesterday, Federer started in English, switched to Swiss German, then High German, and finally to French.

As the day turned out, the French were entirely deserving of the last word. In the final match on Center Court, Marion Bartoli, a physically unimposing, plucky grinder born in France but relocated to Geneva, staged a mind-bending upset of top-seeded Justine Henin to set up a women’s final today with her athletic opposite, the collection of elastic appendages named Venus Williams.

In the evening shadows on Court One, Richard Gasquet, a rising Frenchman, rallied from two sets behind against Andy Roddick, taking consecutive tie breakers against a player who had won 18 in a row and the fifth set, 8-6, when Roddick’s primary weapon, his serve, deserted him and his robotic net play ruined him.

The Jimmy Connors-coached Roddick had tried to summon his inner Jimbo, working himself into a gladiatorial frenzy, challenging the pro-Gasquet crowd and screaming, “Let’s go, come on,” after holding serve for 1-1 in the fifth set. But Gasquet’s racket was speaking a dialect of Federer’s by then, especially with the backhand, to earn his first Grand Slam semifinal today with Federer, the four-time defending champion, budding legend and practiced linguist.

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Federer’s four-tongue news conference lasted more than 30 minutes, or about the length of two of the four sets he needed to dispose of Ferrero. American tennis fans following Federer across Europe during the spring clay-court season on television may recall him addressing crowds directly in Hamburg, Germany, and a couple of weeks later in Paris after losing the French Open final to Rafael Nadal — that scary young Spaniard whose game is translating more and more on grass.

Federer obviously reaped the cultural benefits of growing up in Basel, in northwest Switzerland, bordering Germany and France. While only able to vouch for his English yesterday, idioms and all, it didn’t seem to me that anyone in the room was complaining about the quality, or unappreciative of the effort.

When the news conference ended, a Swiss journalist admitted that Federer does get annoyed having to repeat himself on what he did differently in the third set from the second. But Federer is a throwback champion who generally welcomes the role of global tennis ambassador.

He also realized how strange it was not to have been in the interview room since beating Marat Safin on the first Friday of the tournament until the completion of the Ferrero match that was suspended Thursday at 5-5 in the first set.

What had Federer done on his Wimbledon summer vacation? “Yeah, not much, really,” he said. “I went to the city once or twice. Went to the hairdresser. Watched movies. Played cards. Hanged out.”

All right, he’s not grammatically perfect, or terribly exciting, but there is no more majestic player in tennis — or any sport, for that matter. It was good to have him back, bewildering Center Court fans when he dropped the second set, before shedding the rust and reserving his Center Court place today, with Bjorn Borg, the man he is trying to match this weekend with a fifth consecutive title, expected in the royal box.

“Oh, no pressure, I’ve played in front of him,” Federer said. “Obviously, to maybe equal his record would be fantastic, him maybe watching my match.”

Roddick’s demise no doubt bettered Federer’s chances of making the final, as Gasquet left his news conference last night at half-past eight, complaining of fatigue and tight quad muscles. Then again, Nadal’s opponent today, Novak Djokovic, needed five hours and on-court back treatment yesterday to survive Marcos Baghdatis.

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The results and conditions created an air of inevitability around the men’s semifinals, as well as the women’s final that pairs Williams, the three-time champion, with Bartoli, whose fourth-round exit at the French Open this spring was the best she had done in 22 previous Grand Slams.

Forecasts here should never be etched in stone. Clouds can roll out quickly. Bartoli, who always looks exhausted between points, trying to catch her breath, dropped the first set to Henin, 6-1, before reversing that score in a mind-blowing third-set rout. Flaky as a croissant, she credited the handsome sighting in the stands of the actor Pierce Brosnan as her inspiration.

For his part, Gasquet said he told his coach in the third set that Roddick was serving too well, compared his own play to dog excrement and said he “didn’t expect to come back at all” before leaving Roddick so distraught he could barely speak English, much less a foreign language, at his postmatch news conference.

“Come on” turned to “Allez.” The French carried two players into the tournament’s final three matches, along with an American, a Spaniard, a Serb and, of course, Federer, the Swiss master of language and, for the last four years and counting, the voice last heard on the Wimbledon grass courts.