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The Last Days of Roger Federer (and RST) 😔
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grif
Feb 19, 2024, 11:25:37 AMFeb 19
to
Geoff Dyer
01.
Pundits have been speculating about when Roger might retire for more years than Borg spent on the Tour, from the moment his aura of invincibility was dented. Retirement chatter increased in volume and intensity after he was beaten in the second round of Wimbledon in 2013 by Sergiy Stakhovsky, ranked 116. An ongoing back injury that was a factor in that defeat added to speculation about how long he might keep going. Between 2013 and 2016 he failed to win a single Slam. Knee surgery in February 2016 was followed by re-injury in July and subsequent withdrawal from all competitions for the rest of the year. During these years he batted away all questions of retirement as if doing a drill on the practice court, with variations but no apparent lack of conviction. It wasn’t just the tennis, he said. He also liked being on the Tour. He liked the splendid hotels, the travel (by private plane), the adoration. He liked inviting Grigor Dimitrov and Tommy Haas back to his suite for a sing-along. He liked going to all the different cities even if, like most players, he didn’t get to see much of any city, partly because turning up anywhere had the potential to create a love-riot.
In post-final speeches, whether as runner-up or victor, he said he’d be back next year. To be precise, he said he hoped to be back next year and even if he wasn’t back then he always turned up the year after that (except at the French, which he tacitly admitted he had no chance of winning for a second time, until 2019 when he played Nadal in a semi-final rendered meaningless by hurricane-force winds). After losing to Nadal in the Australian Open final of 2009 he’d been reduced to tears (‘God, it’s killing me’) but in the following years he came to terms with the pattern whereby he sailed through the calm waters of the early rounds before coming up against either the swirling menace of Nadal’s left hand or the Balkan wall of Djokovic’s implacable defence.
So even when it looked as if he would never win another Slam we were glad he kept playing, glad he didn’t subscribe to Borg’s zero-sum ideal of number one or bust, because it gave us a chance to see him. It may have been impossible to beat Djokovic or Nadal but against almost everyone else it looked like he was playing the most perfect tennis possible. It was an illusion that we could believe in.
And then came the annus mirabilis of 2017 when he bounced straight back from knee surgery to win the Australian Open, Indian Wells, Miami, and Wimbledon. We weren’t able just to see him play; we were possibly seeing him at a new peak, when he was playing better than ever and when our ability to appreciate what we were seeing—what we had previously taken for granted—had itself been greatly enhanced. The backhand had long been vulnerable, constantly battered by Nadal’s top-spin forehand. Now he was hitting shoulder-height backhand winners in rally after rally. His haul of Slams was nineteen, to be followed, in 2018, by his twentieth (at Wimbledon) and a couple of flickering returns to the number-one spot. But the real triumph was beyond statistics and calculation. He had again demonstrated that the most efficient way to play tennis was also the most beautiful—and vice versa. Aesthetics and victory could go hand in hand.
Plenty of top male players have gorgeous one-handed backhands (all but extinct in the women’s game since the abdication of the majestic Justine Henin) but with Roger’s fading the reign of beauty is coming to an end.
...
...
04.
It’s tormenting at any stage if you lose having failed to convert a match point but although it’s better in every way to get beaten in a final than to be on the plane home (which, for tennis players, translates into ‘next stop on the tour’) after the first round the incremental torment is exacerbated as the competition proceeds. You blow your chances in the third round—that’s frustrating, to put it mildly, but you’d still have to rack up hundreds more points in each of the subsequent rounds if you were to win the championship. There is still an awful long way to go. But what if you are just a single point away from becoming champion?
Will there ever be a more agonising example than Roger serving in the 2019 Wimbledon final against Djokovic at 8–7 in the fifth? Two aces have taken him to 40–15. On the next point he hits a loose forehand into the right tramline. At 40–30 he comes to the net behind a so-so approach and is passed easily. Deuce. Djoko wins the next two points and it’s 8–8. The match rolls on to a final-set tie-break—the first ever at Wimbledon—but from that point on one sensed that Roger’s chance had gone. Perhaps he did too, especially given how Djoko had made a famous return from a perfect serve while two match points down in the semi-final of the U.S. Open in 2011, going on to win both the match and the championship.
To have those two Wimbledon points again, to have done things differently, to have stayed back rather than rushing to the net at 40–30 … It’s the exact opposite of the passage in The Gay Science when Nietzsche asks us to imagine a moment so perfect you would live your whole life again, with all its manifold unhappiness and disappointments, in order to relive it through all eternity. Or is it?
There were so many ways in which those two points, those two moments, could have turned out differently but for that to have happened everything else, not just in that match but in Roger’s career and life, would have to have been different, including beating big-serving Roddick in what became—in Roger’s own words—a serving contest in the fifth. And maybe the other nineteen Slams as well.
It was an especially hard or heavy loss to bear because that one point—one from a total of thousands won and lost at that tournament alone—had, within an hour, been transformed into two more significant figures: twenty and sixteen, rather than twenty-one and fifteen—the number of Slams, that is, won by Roger and Djokovic respectively. That one point might have made the difference between his record remaining intact for all time and his being overtaken by both Djokovic and Nadal (who drew level at the French).*
*As I fiddled around, making last-minute changes to this manuscript, Roger, Nadal, and Djokovic were tied at twenty Slams apiece: a symmetrical triangle of shared and almost inconceivable greatness—until Nadal won his twenty-first in the 2022 Australian Open.
...
...
Postscript
The semi-final against Djokovic in the 2019 Australian Open wasn’t Roger’s last match after all. He came back, falteringly, in 2021, beating Dan Evans in his first match at the Qatar Open before going out to Nikoloz Basilashvili, having surrendered a match point, in his second. (Among Roger’s many records might he also claim the unwanted crown of having lost more matches, from match point up, than any other player?) At Roland-Garros he survived a draining third-round encounter with Dominik Koepfer only to withdraw ahead of his next match against Matteo Berrettini in order to protect his knee for the upcoming grass season—which got off to a start (and a stop) in the first round of Halle. That left Wimbledon, where time and score had stood still since the final against Djokovic in 2019. He could easily have gone out in the first round if Adrian Mannarino had not slipped and landed in a scary heap. Everyone was slipping on the slick and greasy grass, on all the courts; most managed to untangle their limbs, pick themselves up, and carry on. Mannarino (knee), like Serena Williams (ankle), was forced to retire. After that narrow escape Roger looked to be getting back to something approaching his best—whether his forgotten or remembered best was hard to tell—until, on a gusty second Wednesday, he put in a less than gutsy performance against Hubert Hurkacz and was gone, in three sets. Gone, it turned out, for another bout of knee surgery.
Andy Murray, meanwhile, persisted in coming back for more even if more meant less and less. As he succumbed to Denis Shapovalov, in three sets in the third round of Wimbledon, there was a perceptible feeling that, commendable though it is to rage against the dying of the light, we’d had almost enough of the on-court mutterings and rantings, the all-round gnarliness that helped fuel the rage to compete. Instead of soldiering on, maybe it was time for him to halt off into the twilight.
British attention, in any case, was already drifting. While the light thickened on Centre Court the sun was rising, at implausible speed, over at Court 1, on Emma Raducanu. Just eighteen—the same age as Geoffrey Wellum when he began flying fighters—she played with a high-kick smile rather than a Dunblane scowl: with ‘light feet’ and ‘without a grimace,’ as Nietzsche said of Carmen. Emmania flash-lit the land! Two months later, at the U.S. Open, it lit up the world. And something utterly unexpected happened, more unexpected, even, than Raducanu’s taking the title: I was starting to forget about Roger.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXLgZZE072g
01.
Pundits have been speculating about when Roger might retire for more years than Borg spent on the Tour, from the moment his aura of invincibility was dented. Retirement chatter increased in volume and intensity after he was beaten in the second round of Wimbledon in 2013 by Sergiy Stakhovsky, ranked 116. An ongoing back injury that was a factor in that defeat added to speculation about how long he might keep going. Between 2013 and 2016 he failed to win a single Slam. Knee surgery in February 2016 was followed by re-injury in July and subsequent withdrawal from all competitions for the rest of the year. During these years he batted away all questions of retirement as if doing a drill on the practice court, with variations but no apparent lack of conviction. It wasn’t just the tennis, he said. He also liked being on the Tour. He liked the splendid hotels, the travel (by private plane), the adoration. He liked inviting Grigor Dimitrov and Tommy Haas back to his suite for a sing-along. He liked going to all the different cities even if, like most players, he didn’t get to see much of any city, partly because turning up anywhere had the potential to create a love-riot.
In post-final speeches, whether as runner-up or victor, he said he’d be back next year. To be precise, he said he hoped to be back next year and even if he wasn’t back then he always turned up the year after that (except at the French, which he tacitly admitted he had no chance of winning for a second time, until 2019 when he played Nadal in a semi-final rendered meaningless by hurricane-force winds). After losing to Nadal in the Australian Open final of 2009 he’d been reduced to tears (‘God, it’s killing me’) but in the following years he came to terms with the pattern whereby he sailed through the calm waters of the early rounds before coming up against either the swirling menace of Nadal’s left hand or the Balkan wall of Djokovic’s implacable defence.
So even when it looked as if he would never win another Slam we were glad he kept playing, glad he didn’t subscribe to Borg’s zero-sum ideal of number one or bust, because it gave us a chance to see him. It may have been impossible to beat Djokovic or Nadal but against almost everyone else it looked like he was playing the most perfect tennis possible. It was an illusion that we could believe in.
And then came the annus mirabilis of 2017 when he bounced straight back from knee surgery to win the Australian Open, Indian Wells, Miami, and Wimbledon. We weren’t able just to see him play; we were possibly seeing him at a new peak, when he was playing better than ever and when our ability to appreciate what we were seeing—what we had previously taken for granted—had itself been greatly enhanced. The backhand had long been vulnerable, constantly battered by Nadal’s top-spin forehand. Now he was hitting shoulder-height backhand winners in rally after rally. His haul of Slams was nineteen, to be followed, in 2018, by his twentieth (at Wimbledon) and a couple of flickering returns to the number-one spot. But the real triumph was beyond statistics and calculation. He had again demonstrated that the most efficient way to play tennis was also the most beautiful—and vice versa. Aesthetics and victory could go hand in hand.
Plenty of top male players have gorgeous one-handed backhands (all but extinct in the women’s game since the abdication of the majestic Justine Henin) but with Roger’s fading the reign of beauty is coming to an end.
...
...
04.
It’s tormenting at any stage if you lose having failed to convert a match point but although it’s better in every way to get beaten in a final than to be on the plane home (which, for tennis players, translates into ‘next stop on the tour’) after the first round the incremental torment is exacerbated as the competition proceeds. You blow your chances in the third round—that’s frustrating, to put it mildly, but you’d still have to rack up hundreds more points in each of the subsequent rounds if you were to win the championship. There is still an awful long way to go. But what if you are just a single point away from becoming champion?
Will there ever be a more agonising example than Roger serving in the 2019 Wimbledon final against Djokovic at 8–7 in the fifth? Two aces have taken him to 40–15. On the next point he hits a loose forehand into the right tramline. At 40–30 he comes to the net behind a so-so approach and is passed easily. Deuce. Djoko wins the next two points and it’s 8–8. The match rolls on to a final-set tie-break—the first ever at Wimbledon—but from that point on one sensed that Roger’s chance had gone. Perhaps he did too, especially given how Djoko had made a famous return from a perfect serve while two match points down in the semi-final of the U.S. Open in 2011, going on to win both the match and the championship.
To have those two Wimbledon points again, to have done things differently, to have stayed back rather than rushing to the net at 40–30 … It’s the exact opposite of the passage in The Gay Science when Nietzsche asks us to imagine a moment so perfect you would live your whole life again, with all its manifold unhappiness and disappointments, in order to relive it through all eternity. Or is it?
There were so many ways in which those two points, those two moments, could have turned out differently but for that to have happened everything else, not just in that match but in Roger’s career and life, would have to have been different, including beating big-serving Roddick in what became—in Roger’s own words—a serving contest in the fifth. And maybe the other nineteen Slams as well.
It was an especially hard or heavy loss to bear because that one point—one from a total of thousands won and lost at that tournament alone—had, within an hour, been transformed into two more significant figures: twenty and sixteen, rather than twenty-one and fifteen—the number of Slams, that is, won by Roger and Djokovic respectively. That one point might have made the difference between his record remaining intact for all time and his being overtaken by both Djokovic and Nadal (who drew level at the French).*
*As I fiddled around, making last-minute changes to this manuscript, Roger, Nadal, and Djokovic were tied at twenty Slams apiece: a symmetrical triangle of shared and almost inconceivable greatness—until Nadal won his twenty-first in the 2022 Australian Open.
...
...
Postscript
The semi-final against Djokovic in the 2019 Australian Open wasn’t Roger’s last match after all. He came back, falteringly, in 2021, beating Dan Evans in his first match at the Qatar Open before going out to Nikoloz Basilashvili, having surrendered a match point, in his second. (Among Roger’s many records might he also claim the unwanted crown of having lost more matches, from match point up, than any other player?) At Roland-Garros he survived a draining third-round encounter with Dominik Koepfer only to withdraw ahead of his next match against Matteo Berrettini in order to protect his knee for the upcoming grass season—which got off to a start (and a stop) in the first round of Halle. That left Wimbledon, where time and score had stood still since the final against Djokovic in 2019. He could easily have gone out in the first round if Adrian Mannarino had not slipped and landed in a scary heap. Everyone was slipping on the slick and greasy grass, on all the courts; most managed to untangle their limbs, pick themselves up, and carry on. Mannarino (knee), like Serena Williams (ankle), was forced to retire. After that narrow escape Roger looked to be getting back to something approaching his best—whether his forgotten or remembered best was hard to tell—until, on a gusty second Wednesday, he put in a less than gutsy performance against Hubert Hurkacz and was gone, in three sets. Gone, it turned out, for another bout of knee surgery.
Andy Murray, meanwhile, persisted in coming back for more even if more meant less and less. As he succumbed to Denis Shapovalov, in three sets in the third round of Wimbledon, there was a perceptible feeling that, commendable though it is to rage against the dying of the light, we’d had almost enough of the on-court mutterings and rantings, the all-round gnarliness that helped fuel the rage to compete. Instead of soldiering on, maybe it was time for him to halt off into the twilight.
British attention, in any case, was already drifting. While the light thickened on Centre Court the sun was rising, at implausible speed, over at Court 1, on Emma Raducanu. Just eighteen—the same age as Geoffrey Wellum when he began flying fighters—she played with a high-kick smile rather than a Dunblane scowl: with ‘light feet’ and ‘without a grimace,’ as Nietzsche said of Carmen. Emmania flash-lit the land! Two months later, at the U.S. Open, it lit up the world. And something utterly unexpected happened, more unexpected, even, than Raducanu’s taking the title: I was starting to forget about Roger.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXLgZZE072g
Whisper
Feb 20, 2024, 4:06:09 AMFeb 20
to
On 20/02/2024 3:25 am, grif wrote:
> Geoff Dyer
significant happened. As stated Roger had served 2 aces in a row to get
to 40-15 and 2 match points. He was zoning on the serve and fooled
Novak repeatedly. His 1st serve at 40-15 was down the T and once again
fooled Novak who was leaning to his right. It would have been a 3rd ace
in a row and epic way to clinch his 9th Wimbledon crown. 'If' the ball
didn't clip the net and was called a let. That's what it came down to.
You couldn't write this. Federer and Djokovic will never forget this
moment, simultaneously a dream and a nightmare.
> Geoff Dyer
> Will there ever be a more agonising example than Roger serving in the
> 2019 Wimbledon final against Djokovic at 8–7 in the fifth? Two aces have
> taken him to 40–15. On the next point he hits a loose forehand into the
> right tramline.
Before that point something that isn't discussed much but is far more
> 2019 Wimbledon final against Djokovic at 8–7 in the fifth? Two aces have
> taken him to 40–15. On the next point he hits a loose forehand into the
> right tramline.
significant happened. As stated Roger had served 2 aces in a row to get
to 40-15 and 2 match points. He was zoning on the serve and fooled
Novak repeatedly. His 1st serve at 40-15 was down the T and once again
fooled Novak who was leaning to his right. It would have been a 3rd ace
in a row and epic way to clinch his 9th Wimbledon crown. 'If' the ball
didn't clip the net and was called a let. That's what it came down to.
You couldn't write this. Federer and Djokovic will never forget this
moment, simultaneously a dream and a nightmare.
*skriptis
Feb 20, 2024, 6:31:17 AMFeb 20
to
Whisper <whi...@ozemail.com.au> Wrote in message:r
> On 20/02/2024 3:25 am, grif wrote:> Geoff Dyer> Will there ever be a more agonising example than Roger serving in the > 2019 Wimbledon final against Djokovic at 8–7 in the fifth? Two aces have > taken him to 40–15. On the next point he hits a loose forehand into the > right tramline. Before that point something that isn't discussed much but is far more significant happened. As stated Roger had served 2 aces in pa row to get to 40-15 and 2 match points. He was zoning on the serve and fooled Novak repeatedly. His 1st serve at 40-15 was down the T and once again fooled Novak who was leaning to his right. It would have been a 3rd ace in a row and epic way to clinch his 9th Wimbledon crown. 'If' the ball didn't clip the net and was called a let. That's what it came down to. You couldn't write this. Federer and Djokovic will never forget this moment, simultaneously a dream and a nightmare.
God punished him for telling Novak's parents to shut up.
It's humor and a lesson in humility.
Three times 40-15.
2010 USO semis
2011 USO semis
2019 Wim final
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
Karl Marx
But perhaps Federer should have no regrets?
I mean what did he lose?
Who cares about one Wimbledon title, 8 or 9 is almost the same, neither is Decima, and 8 is still a record and Federer might even get to keep his Wimbledon record from Djokovic so it's not a huge loss for him.
If Djokovic doesn't win 8th Wimbledon, essentially Federer didn't lose anything by not winning that match.
Otoh Djokovic lost fucking Grand Slam by being emotional over US crowd supporting him and wanting him to win after experiencing years of abuse there. I'd say that's bigger.
--
----Android NewsGroup Reader----
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> On 20/02/2024 3:25 am, grif wrote:> Geoff Dyer> Will there ever be a more agonising example than Roger serving in the > 2019 Wimbledon final against Djokovic at 8–7 in the fifth? Two aces have > taken him to 40–15. On the next point he hits a loose forehand into the > right tramline. Before that point something that isn't discussed much but is far more significant happened. As stated Roger had served 2 aces in pa row to get to 40-15 and 2 match points. He was zoning on the serve and fooled Novak repeatedly. His 1st serve at 40-15 was down the T and once again fooled Novak who was leaning to his right. It would have been a 3rd ace in a row and epic way to clinch his 9th Wimbledon crown. 'If' the ball didn't clip the net and was called a let. That's what it came down to. You couldn't write this. Federer and Djokovic will never forget this moment, simultaneously a dream and a nightmare.
God punished him for telling Novak's parents to shut up.
It's humor and a lesson in humility.
Three times 40-15.
2010 USO semis
2011 USO semis
2019 Wim final
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
Karl Marx
But perhaps Federer should have no regrets?
I mean what did he lose?
Who cares about one Wimbledon title, 8 or 9 is almost the same, neither is Decima, and 8 is still a record and Federer might even get to keep his Wimbledon record from Djokovic so it's not a huge loss for him.
If Djokovic doesn't win 8th Wimbledon, essentially Federer didn't lose anything by not winning that match.
Otoh Djokovic lost fucking Grand Slam by being emotional over US crowd supporting him and wanting him to win after experiencing years of abuse there. I'd say that's bigger.
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Whisper
Feb 20, 2024, 6:55:17 AMFeb 20
to
On 20/02/2024 10:31 pm, *skriptis wrote:
> Whisper <whi...@ozemail.com.au> Wrote in message:r
>> On 20/02/2024 3:25 am, grif wrote:> Geoff Dyer> Will there ever be a more agonising example than Roger serving in the > 2019 Wimbledon final against Djokovic at 8–7 in the fifth? Two aces have > taken him to 40–15. On the next point he hits a loose forehand into the > right tramline. Before that point something that isn't discussed much but is far more significant happened. As stated Roger had served 2 aces in pa row to get to 40-15 and 2 match points. He was zoning on the serve and fooled Novak repeatedly. His 1st serve at 40-15 was down the T and once again fooled Novak who was leaning to his right. It would have been a 3rd ace in a row and epic way to clinch his 9th Wimbledon crown. 'If' the ball didn't clip the net and was called a let. That's what it came down to. You couldn't write this. Federer and Djokovic will never forget this moment, simultaneously a dream and a nightmare.
>
>
>
> God punished him for telling Novak's parents to shut up.
>
> It's humor and a lesson in humility.
>
>
> Three times 40-15.
>
> 2010 USO semis
> 2011 USO semis
> 2019 Wim final
>
>
Yes, but the USO matches were s/f and at the time Nadal was fave to beat
> Whisper <whi...@ozemail.com.au> Wrote in message:r
>> On 20/02/2024 3:25 am, grif wrote:> Geoff Dyer> Will there ever be a more agonising example than Roger serving in the > 2019 Wimbledon final against Djokovic at 8–7 in the fifth? Two aces have > taken him to 40–15. On the next point he hits a loose forehand into the > right tramline. Before that point something that isn't discussed much but is far more significant happened. As stated Roger had served 2 aces in pa row to get to 40-15 and 2 match points. He was zoning on the serve and fooled Novak repeatedly. His 1st serve at 40-15 was down the T and once again fooled Novak who was leaning to his right. It would have been a 3rd ace in a row and epic way to clinch his 9th Wimbledon crown. 'If' the ball didn't clip the net and was called a let. That's what it came down to. You couldn't write this. Federer and Djokovic will never forget this moment, simultaneously a dream and a nightmare.
>
>
>
> God punished him for telling Novak's parents to shut up.
>
> It's humor and a lesson in humility.
>
>
> Three times 40-15.
>
> 2010 USO semis
> 2011 USO semis
> 2019 Wim final
>
>
Roger everywhere. We don't know for certain what would have happened in
the finals, but no way was Roger fave to win.
> History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
>
> Karl Marx
>
>
>
>
>
> But perhaps Federer should have no regrets?
> I mean what did he lose?
>
Novak would be pegged back at 6. Also the 0-3 in Wimbledon finals v
Novak is big in goat debates.
> Who cares about one Wimbledon title, 8 or 9 is almost the same, neither is Decima, and 8 is still a record and Federer might even get to keep his Wimbledon record from Djokovic so it's not a huge >loss for him.
>
> If Djokovic doesn't win 8th Wimbledon, essentially Federer didn't lose anything by not winning that match.
>
>
help Roger look like some clear cut Wimbledon/grass goat. That loss
hurt his legacy a lot imo. It's an unforgettable match that will be
discussed forever.
> Otoh Djokovic lost fucking Grand Slam by being emotional over US crowd supporting him and wanting him to win after experiencing years of abuse there. I'd say that's bigger.
>
calendar slam on all 3 surfaces, got to him. He's human after all.
PeteWasLucky
Feb 20, 2024, 12:11:08 PMFeb 20
to
> God punished him for telling Novak's parents to shut up
lol :) post of the century.
grif
Feb 20, 2024, 12:41:24 PMFeb 20
to
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/02/the-last-days-of-roger-federer-by-geoff-dyer-review-the-art-of-bowing-out
Still, not many people can have lived Rogie's life. He probably wouldn't change a thing. So, as we tick down to the final hours of RST, this song feel appropriate 😔
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5TMU6916U8
TT
Feb 20, 2024, 1:05:04 PMFeb 20
to
Sawfish
Feb 20, 2024, 1:15:51 PMFeb 20
to
had to watch the big screen outside with the crowd, and was already a
bit pissed.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Goodness could be found sometimes in the middle of hell."
--Charles Bukowski
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
grif
Feb 20, 2024, 1:38:15 PMFeb 20
to
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5TMU6916U8
>>
>>
>
> Does someone actually use google groups for posting to rst?
Yep.
>>
>>
>
> Does someone actually use google groups for posting to rst?
TT
Feb 20, 2024, 1:48:09 PMFeb 20
to
PeteWasLucky
Feb 21, 2024, 8:49:58 AMFeb 21
to
Sawfish <sawfi...@gmail.com> Wrote in message:r
> On 2/20/24 9:11 AM, PeteWasLucky wrote:>> God punished him for telling Novak's parents to shut up> lol :) post of the century.>>> ----Android NewsGroup Reader----> https://piaohong.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/usenet/index.htmlAs I understand it, God wasn't able to get a ticket for the men's final, had to watch the big screen outside with the crowd, and was already a bit pissed.-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"Goodness could be found sometimes in the middle of hell."--Charles Bukowski~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
God makes it very personal :)
--
> On 2/20/24 9:11 AM, PeteWasLucky wrote:>> God punished him for telling Novak's parents to shut up> lol :) post of the century.>>> ----Android NewsGroup Reader----> https://piaohong.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/usenet/index.htmlAs I understand it, God wasn't able to get a ticket for the men's final, had to watch the big screen outside with the crowd, and was already a bit pissed.-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"Goodness could be found sometimes in the middle of hell."--Charles Bukowski~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
God makes it very personal :)
--
PeteWasLucky
Feb 21, 2024, 5:59:22 PMFeb 21
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TT <T...@dprk.kp> Wrote in message:r
> grif kirjoitti 20.2.2024 klo 20.38:> On 20/02/2024 18:05, TT wrote:>> grif kirjoitti 20.2.2024 klo 19.41:>>> On 20/02/2024 09:06, Whisper wrote:>>>> On 20/02/2024 3:25 am, grif wrote:>>>>> Geoff Dyer>>>>> Will there ever be a more agonising example than Roger serving in >>>>> the 2019 Wimbledon final against Djokovic at 8–7 in the fifth? Two >>>>> aces have taken him to 40–15. On the next point he hits a loose >>>>> forehand into the right tramline. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Before that point something that isn't discussed much but is far >>>> more significant happened. As stated Roger had served 2 aces in a >>>> row to get to 40-15 and 2 match points. He was zoning on the serve >>>> and fooled Novak repeatedly. His 1st serve at 40-15 was down the T >>>> and once again fooled Novak who was leaning to his right. It would >>>> have been a 3rd ace in a row and epic way to clinch his 9th >>>> Wimbledon crown. 'If' the ball didn't clip the net and was called a >>>> let. That's what it came down to. You couldn't write this. Federer >>>> and Djokovic will never forget this moment, simultaneously a dream >>>> and a nightmare.>>>>>>>>>> Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence is one of the themes of Geoff Dyer's >>> book (and RST)>>> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/02/the-last-days-of-roger-federer-by-geoff-dyer-review-the-art-of-bowing-out>>>>>> Still, not many people can have lived Rogie's life. He probably >>> wouldn't change a thing. So, as we tick down to the final hours of >>> RST, this song feels appropriate >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5TMU6916U8>>>>>>>>>> Does someone actually use google groups for posting to rst?> > Yep.https://www.eternal-september.org/
What happens when this server gets decommissioned?
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