choosing your battles

when i was a little girl, my dad kept telling me that i was like a decathlete, wanting to be involved in so many different things, and wanting to win in all of them. he was referring to my pursuit of activities and interests, and his way of making me channel my energies, to focus on singular goals, was to draw that analogy. (there are people who can do that, i believe, chase after many dreams and attain much success from multiple pursuits. my mom believes in that, and has always supported me in my wild-goose chases)

in later years, my dad switched to the metaphor of the warrior. the gladiator, armed with only a net and a spear, facing the centurions with their shield and short sword. "choose your battles, hija," he would tell me. know when to charge, when to retreat, when to keep still.

roger federer, in my book, or rather, my dad's book, is the athlete who will never join the decathlon. as a warrior, he would be dapper in his armani suits, but victorious in battle.

to my memory, he has not lost a match because he withdrew or failed to show up for the scheduled match. his loss record in the previous year have all been due to completed matches. many roger federer fans will tell you that their man tanked his lost matches, that he had the best strategy at hand, only to unravel and give the match to his opponent. in four out of five losses last year, he supposedly had the winning formula to beating rafa, but he didn't execute his game plan. in his loss to andy murray, the other youngster to beat him, he was probably tired from his tough toronto run and didn't last long on court.

but that begs the question. my admiration for the dapper swiss is that in the run-up to the australian open, he chose to fly in to melbourne early, skipping tournaments in qatar, chennai, and adelaide, to practise with his coach, tony roche. this week he is participating in exhibition matches at kooyong; no competition rank points to be gained.

in light of the withdrawals of the men in sydney (see previous entry) and the equally disturbing retirements of two russian women whose games i admire, kutznetsova (respiratory illness) and petrova (abdominal strain), roger's choice to not push himself prior to next week's grand slam appears to be stroked with the hand of wisdom and grudging practicality. any match practice he will be getting is happening now, at kooyong (where, as of this writing, it took him over 2 hours to put away radek stepanek in 3 sets 7-6, 6-7, 7-6). acclimatisation to australia's notorious summer heat was addressed by flying in early last week.

if anything, the man has not thumbed his commitments to any tournaments, has showed up when he was supposed to show up. the only disappointed people, if at all, are his fans, who want to see him playing 100% (like he was against blake in the YEC final in shanghai) 100% of the time against 100% of his opponents. barring that seemingly impossible dream, he has hardly let expectations down. the two times he withdrew last year from a tournament were: 1. after the epic five-setter with rafa in rome, he pulled out of hamburg; 2. after winning the madrid masters, he pulled out of paris.

given the grinding schedule that the ATP has for its players, i'd say that roger has been able to choose his battles judiciously, avoiding crippling injury (read: mark philippoussis, venus williams, and mary pierce) while standing head and shoulders and chest and stomach above the rest of the field. that is the one thing that might help other players catch up with his 8000+ points, possible injury. but he has kept himself fit for the important battles and emerged victorious 99% of the time.

damn pretty impressive. and i'm not even a federer fan. but i sure wouldn't mind getting my hands on one of those cute feder-bears. everybody loves a winner.