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In our obsession with the numbers and records, we might have lost sight of the real reason why the Swiss Genius is peerless – its sublime beauty of His art ! Is Mozart matchless because of his total number of compositions or because his music sounds the way it does to our ear ? Surely, to obsess with the numbers at the expense of aesthetic appreciation is a form of sporting philistinism. Aesthetic experience is not quantifiable, yet when you sit and watch Federer it occurs to you that few men in the entire history of sport might have played the way He does. Trying to break His game down to its constituent parts – serve, forehand, backhand, balance – would be a shame. You take it in with the same breathtaking awe, you might experience while viewing the Grand Canyon !
His near incomparable greatness has been lauded by the whole world, including perhaps by the piranha hunter-gatherers, deep in the Amazon rain forests. After all, He moves like a ballerina on the court; He hits the ball with such finesse that it almost feels like He is whispering sweet-nothings into the ear of a lover; He has power too but His angles are envy of even geometry and trigonometry !
