How the world's elected party politicians, disapproved of by more and more of the plain people, must envy the popularity of Roger Federer, approved of by the whole of civilised mankind.
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In these past few days the world has unconditionally gurgled and gushed over the Swiss Wizard in the wake of his winning his eighth Wimbledon singles title. Coincidentally, in these same days wherever I have gone in the digital galaxy to follow the political conversation of mankind I have been finding feverish analyses of how and why party politicians are now so despised that now even dear democracy itself is teetering on brinks.
But those of us tragically fond of sport and of democracy want to be able to dote on heroes and heroines of both sport and in politics. How rare it is, though, for anyone in politics to seem as deserving an admiration-magnet as the idols that abound in sport. In my home sporting champions like Roger Federer and Johnathan Thurston are spoken of with an awed fondness. Meanwhile, though, no politician has been spoken of about our house in that appreciative tone of voice since the heyday of Paul Keating (prime minister 1991-1996).
He was, famously, described (modestly, by himself) as the Placido Domingo of Australian politics. But we could, too, plausibly think of him as the Roger Federer of Australian politics.
If that sounds pretentious of me (and I am always trying to get yet another guernsey, my fifth, in Private Eye magazine's fabled Pseud's Corner) I believe I am sometimes outpseuded in a new biography of Federer.
In his Roger Federer: Portrait of an Artist Christopher Jackson swoons that Federer has the "air of a modern king", that he has "the look of a Greek statue permitted motion". Still in this genre, in his 2006 essay Federer As Religious Experience, David Foster Wallace praises Federer's divine physical grace, his "great liquid whip" of a forehand.
To digress for a short rally of words, at her post-final press conference the splendid new Wimbledon women's singles champion Ms Muguruza enriched our English vocabulary with the invention of a new word.
The press reported her saying that "It is very hard to find, like, a recipe to feel good fitness-wise, tennistically [sic], mentally. But I think in this tournament I put everything together …"
This is just the word that those of us who spend so much time playing and talking tennis have always needed. Henceforth it will always be on the lips of those of us who meet, talk and play at the tennistically idyllic Reid Tennis Club.
And while on fine new words for our times, a writer with Spiked Online, one of those writing of the looming end of party politics, uses the canny word "clicktivist". It describes those barely-active political activists whose only political activity is the clicking of tweets.
But I return to my theme of the puzzle of why it is so easy to hero-worship athletes but so very difficult to adore politicians. For me no Australian politician has displayed great liquid whips of policy, rhetoric and ideas since Keating.
One obvious reason why we respect athletes but have less time for politicians is that we all know we, too, could easily be politicians if we wanted to. What talents does one need to be a do-nothing leader of the ACT Liberals (whose name escapes me for the moment), a ludicrous Sam Dastyari, a blundering and unpleasant Peter Dutton? But we know we could never be a Federer or a Thurston, a Ronaldo (soccer), or a Sally Fitzgibbons (surfing) let alone an Alex Honnold (Alex is the Roger Federer of free solo rock climbing). What they do seems god-like in its skilled cleverness.
If tennis gods seem especially divine it is because almost everyone has had a hit-and-giggle go at tennis and so has discovered how fiendishly difficult it is for mortals. This makes Roger's liquid whips seem all the more miraculous. Modern tennis racquets and hyperneumatic modern tennis balls give hit-and-gigglers, artificially, tennistically, the brute strength of Wonder Woman. Anyone can accidentally send a ball rocketing over the fence at Reid and off towards Civic. But it takes artistry to liquidly whip the ball to the right spots of the teensy weensy postage-stamp space that is the marked tennis court. Roger's aplomb at this is tennistically exquisite.
Why is it so hard for politicians to do and say exquisite things that delight us? Those of us who remember, wistfully, Paul Keating's heyday, can testify that it is possible. Ah, those of us who know and love tennis (as Bill Shankly famously said of football, tennis isn't a matter of life and death – it's far more important than that) see so many ways in which tennis and Life (including politics) overlap!
One sensitive reviewer of the new aforementioned biography of Federer notes how players' "post-match speeches rarely equal the conversations of the match itself: the aggressive propositions and sly rebuttals, the witty topspin lob and the drop shot's quiet sarcasm".
Yes, no wonder then that Paul Keating, in his heyday so witty, the master of the aggressive proposition and the sly rebuttal, of quiet sarcasm, now strikes one as The Roger Federer of Australian Politics.
