The prematurely lost David Foster Wallace (he committed suicide in 2008 at the age of 46) has been one of the most idiosyncratic figures in American literature in recent decades. One of his most constant and great hobbies was tennis. In Roger Federer as a Religious Experience. Five Texts on Tennis (translated by Kostas Kalcas, ed. Pletos) speaks passionately about the athlete and the sport he treats as something almost transcendent. Today we are publishing two indicative excerpts.

More or less everyone who loves tennis and watches the men’s tour on TV has experienced what we might call Federer Moments in recent years. It’s about the times when watching a young Swiss play, mouths open, eyes bulge and noises are made that make spouses in other rooms run to see if you’re okay. The moments are more intense if you’ve played enough tennis to understand the improbability of what you just saw him do. We all have our examples. Here is one.

It was like a scene from The Matrix. I don’t know what sounds were made, but my wife told me she ran in and found popcorn on the couch…

We’re in the 2005 US Open final and Federer is pitching against Andre Agassi early in the fourth set. An exchange of mid-range ground strikes develops, one of the signature butterfly forms in today’s base game based on strength, with Federer and Agassi taunting each other from one corner of the floor to the other in an attempt and the two preparing the game-winning shot from the back line…until all of a sudden Agassi doesn’t throw a powerful, heavy diagonal backhand that pushes Federer wide into his left corner and Federer reaches the ball, but his extended backhand is shallow, a polare beyond the service line, which of course is kind of what Agassi is eating for breakfast and as Federer changes direction furiously to return to center, Agassi steps up to hit a low ball on the rise and hits the ball hard sending it back to the same left corner in an attempt to catch Federer off balance which he does; Federer is still close to the corner but running to the center line and the ball flies to the point now behind him where he was just before he has time to turn his body and Agassi follows his shot into the net at an angle from the side backhand… and what Federer does is he kind of changes his turn in an instant and almost bounces back three or four steps incredibly fast to land a right hand from around the corner of his backhand, with his whole the weight moves backwards and the forehand is a topspin rocket parallel to the touchline that hits the net past Agassi who reaches to reach it but the ball goes past him, flies straight down the touchline and lands directly to the right of Agassi . corner of the court, game-winning shot – Federer is still pulling back when the ball lands.

And then there’s the familiar second of shocked silence from the New York crowd before it explodes, and John McEnroe, on TV with a second commentator’s headset and a microphone on his head, says (mostly to himself, it seems), “How do you land the winning blow from this position? And he’s right: given Agassi’s position and world-class speed, Federer was forced to send that ball down a five-centimeter tube of space to get past him, which he did in reverse without having time to prepare and put his weight into the puff. It was impossible. It was like a scene from The Matrix. I don’t know what sounds were made, but my wife told me she ran in to find popcorn all over the couch and I got down on one knee with eyes that looked like a pair of funny convenience store eyes.

Anyway, this is an example of the Federer Moment, and it was only on TV – and the truth is that tennis shown on TV is as close to live tennis as porno tapes are to the living reality of human love.

Serve with unmatched speed and forehand like a smooth whip

The beauty of a top athlete is almost impossible to describe directly. Or pass it obliquely. Federer’s forehand is a big, flowing whip, his one-handed backhand can be thrown dry, front-loaded with spin or sweep – a punch so sharp that the ball carves strange shapes in the air and skims across the grass, bouncing up to ankle height. His serve has world-class speed, accuracy and variety that no one else even comes close to; his serve movements are flexible and non-eccentric, distinguished (on TV) only by a certain eel-like burst of the whole body. moment of impact. The way he predicts the next shots and reads the game is unreal and his footwork is the best in the sport – as a child he was also a great football talent. All of this is true, and yet none of it explains anything or conveys the experience of watching this man play. See firsthand the beauty and genius of his game. You are more forced to approach all these aesthetic things indirectly, to discuss them or – like Aquinas with his own inexpressible object – to try to define them in terms of what they are not.

One thing is wrong: on television. At least not completely. Television tennis has its advantages, but these advantages also have disadvantages, the main one being a certain illusion of familiarity. Slow motion TV replays, close-ups and graphics are so popular with viewers that we don’t even realize how much is lost in the broadcast. And most of what is lost is the pure physical form of tennis at the highest level, the sense of the speed with which the ball moves and the players react.

This loss is easily explained. The priority of television during a rally is to cover the entire court, a complete view so that the audience can see both the tennis players and the overall geometry of the exchange of blows. Thus, the TV selects a viewing point that is above and below the baseline. You, the spectator, are high up behind the court and look down. This perspective, as any student of the fine arts will tell you, “closes” the field. After all, real tennis is three-dimensional, and the image on the TV screen is only two-dimensional. The size lost (or rather distorted) on the screen is the length of the real court, 23.77 meters between the baselines, and the speed at which the ball travels along this length is the speed of impact, which is hidden on television, but up close – scary to watch. This may seem abstract or far-fetched, in which case I won’t stop you, go to a professional tournament in person – especially the regional courts in the early rounds where you can sit twenty feet from the touchline – to get yourself a sense of the difference.

If you’ve only watched tennis on TV, you simply have no idea how hard the pros hit the ball, how fast it moves, how little time the players have to get to it, and how fast they can move and spin. and hit and return to neutral. And no one can be faster or more deceptive in them than Roger Federer.