You’re so getting the wrong idea about Kathleen and me with all this sports coverage, but hey, exciting stuff is on TV, and it is our duty as bloggers to watch and report. I’ve been casually following Wimbledon, so as a follow-up to Kathleen’s post about the wonderful Williams sisters, let’s talk about the men.
When I watch any sort of sporting event, I need to choose a team/person to cheer for in order to get invested in watching. For tennis, I like to select the more attractive player and then enthusiastically root for him. So when Roger Federer was playing against Marat Safin, I rooted for Safin:
In retrospect, I think I may have made the wrong decision, considering that my Google image search turned up a lot of these douchey model-like photos of Safin. Anyway, in the Federer-Nadal championship match, there was no question which player I’d cheer for. Sure, I’d rooted against Federer a few days before, but a moderately good-looking human (which Federer is) will always prevail over an actual monkey:
And yeah, that might be an unflattering photo of Nadal, but dude looks like a monkey. He even eats bananas as a mid-match snack. So for this match, Roger was my man. My sister and I watched the match from the gym, feeling kind of lame as we struggled to run for more than ten minutes while ol’ Roger and Rafa battled away for nearly five hours. After watching Federer come back from two sets down to tie things up and get into a fifth set, we thought that the match would be postponed until the next day because of the rain. We thought it was safe to step away from the TV and go to the pool, but no! As we were ordering lunch, we noticed that the match was still on, so it was back into the locker room to watch the rest.
Man, that thing was intense. Federer and Nadal have played each other in the past five Wimbledons, and even though Federer won each time (beating Nadal in the championship just last year), this sixth meeting was insanely evenly matched. The two went game for game until the bitter end, when Nadal finally broke Federer’s serve and went on to win. (And that’s no easy serve to break.) After about four and a half hours of play, the final score was a crazy 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (8), 9-7. My sister and I were glued to the TV, chatting excitedly with all of the old ladies that came into the locker room to watch with us.
As much as I was rooting for Federer, I’m quite impressed by Nadal. The guy is only 22 years old, and he’s already played in six Wimbledons (not six finals — thanks to commenters Sinead and Em for correcting me on those facts). Sure, he looks like a primate, but I can’t even say anything snarky about that record. What have I done in my two decades of life? And I can’t do anything for four and a half hours, let alone bust my ass running around a tennis court. (I also have to admit that it was pretty cute when Nadal monkey-climbed his way through the stands to hug his parents…that got a tear or two out of me.)
When Federer put a cable knit sweater on over his sweaty tennis clothes about 10 seconds after the match ended, I forgot about Nadal and decided I was actually in love with Roger. Then I noticed that the sweater was monogrammed with his own little logo that was on the hats all of his supporters were wearing. Is that pretentious? I’m still undecided. Also, I discovered that he and his cute longtime girlfriend/fiancée/wife (I can’t figure it out) had a photo shoot with Annie Leibowitz featuring photos like this:
I’m sorry, but seriously, Roger? (See more of the slideshow here.) And then in my Wikipedia research, I discovered two more disturbing facts: he launched his own FRAGRANCE back in 2003, and he’s good friends with Tiger Woods. Sigh. Now I’m all conflicted. Anyone have any insights on Roger? Or Monkey Boy, for that matter? I’m just going to lie down and have a cold beverage.
[Posted by Mallory]
six words to change the world. 
