What is a better memory? The most beautiful meeting, the moment when the heart beat the strongest, the most successful article, the most prestigious match? Even after spending fifteen years in the trade, I have no idea. How to compare a World Cup final at the Maracan and a head – to – head with Johan Cruyff, the drizzle that blurs the screen of the laptop one evening of European Cup in the front row of White Hart Lane or the clamor of the Rod Laver Arena which carries Roger Federer towards his 20th Grand Slam title? It’s impossible. So I choose to talk to you about an in-between, these hours, these minutes before. When everything is still possible, suspended and uncertain. It is Sunday November 16, 2014; It is almost 2am and I am sitting in the back of a car driving through London. My best memory is an expectation. A wait of five days.
Two hours earlier, Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka have invented a masterpiece: 2h48 of breathtaking tennis concludes the tie-break of the third set. Losing magnificent, the second took all his time to come to put words on this final of the Masters which passed through his fingers. And in this car, I can see his reddened eyes, rethinking the intensity of the exchanges, the discomfort created by this discussion at the end of the match, the meaning of which is still unclear. What if these two were self-destructive in the most chivalrous way? five days of a Davis Cup final awaited for 22 years, everything is suspended. Time, certainties, predictions.
Then start five days out of time. First there will be the shock of Sunday: Roger Federer’s package. Then that of Monday morning: revelation of the Mirkagate by the Telegraph; which played on the frequencies of the ambient microphones to ping Madame Federer. We can see Severin Lthi and Stan Wawrinka together on the platform of the station of St. Pancrass, it is impossible to know in what state the Swiss team landed in France. The wait then swells the speculations. On the round trips from RF, the state of his back, the mood of the troops. In the bistros of Vieux-Lille, everyone changes their theory. Our colleagues from RMC even organize a spinning from the Swiss hotel, persuaded that Federer is going to train in secret. The mood becomes strange, it feels like a novel by Simenon.
It becomes downright lunar at 6 p.m. Wednesday when the invisible man breaks through the darkness of the Pierre-Mauroy stadium. Engaged in an outfit that serves as a corset, Roger Federer hits a few balls in timing and in slow motion. An appearance from beyond the grave that should be told in real time to calm down reactions that have become hysterical. Mrs rust, the Master is back. The next day, the draw will validate his presence and the sport will resume its rights with this unpredictable mixture (RF, beaten, thanks to its efforts, the French are struggling) and logic (Wawrinka at the level of its great season, the best team simpose).
Sunday, November 23, Switzerland will raise the first silver salad bowl in its history. The collective jubilation is unforgettable, the emotions at the height of a conquest which became legendary at the beginning of the 1990s. And yet, time has been busy sorting through. My best memory is located upstream of the joy: during these five days completely crazy where everything but then absolutely everything seemed possible.
Tennis
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