Spare a thought for the runner-up

There is something more painful than losing, it is losing and ending runner-up. It simply makes you want to kill yourself. You rue those moments when you could have killed it, you want to go back in time just this once, you wish you had done something just at that specific moment and then when you come to realise that it is all over, you wish you were never there and had not put up a fight. I have had such close calls in my life, albeit in my own world of quizzing and school life were a moment's mad rush just ruined everything.

I hate close calls, not because I hate the lost nails or the adrenaline rush, I feel really sorry for the poor dude who just gave it everything and still lost and its even worse if the person who lost, deserved it more than the person who actually won. Such was the case with the Wimbledon Men's Finals of 2009 that pitted Andy Roddick against Roger Federer who was on the verge of becoming the most successful Grand Slam player of all time.

I am delighted that Federer won his 15th grand slam, but somehow, I am not able to focus on that. My heart goes out to Andy Roddick who took the fight to Federer and infact, Federer was looking a worried man on more than a few occasions. Bad luck, Andy, because having to serve from behind in the final set was a handicap that you could have done without. Just to put things into perspective, Federer had not broken Roddick’s surve until that final point of the match and had won his sets on tie-breaks. Just compare that with Roddick, who broke Federer twice and won the 1st and 4th set on the back of those breaks. Federer won and it is great and he has reached somewhere no one has ever gone before and to him, this is just the beginning of setting new frontiers for the next bunch of tennis players waiting to be come up the ranks. But, spare a thought for Andy Roddick who played the game of his life and for the third time lost out to Federer in a Wimbledon Final.

Kipling really meant it when he said

If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same


and incidentally, these are written on the players' entrance to Wimbledon!