Class of a Champion
The big news is Roger Federer lost a tennis match... his 41 match winning streak is over. In many ways, the bigger news is how well Federer handled the loss. Sure, this was not a Grand Slam or a major final, but losing in the first round can’t be a happy occasion for someone who has just won 7 straight tournaments. It may also be a long time, if ever, before Federer has another real chance to break Vilas’s match winning streak. Yet Federer didn’t lose his temper during the match and
stopped to sign autographs as he walked off the court which is a rarity in professional tennis. Losers are usually so frustrated that they rarely sign post-match autographs. Federer also fulfilled his commitment to play doubles later the same day (he won the double match) and spoke candidly in his post-match press conference discussing how Canas played better and deserved to win. He may have lost, but Federer’s performance in winning showed why he is a true champion… the words from the Rudyard Kipling poem “If” which appear above the players’ entrance to Centre Court say it best, “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.”
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