In the Zone: A Column By Len Johnson

In Melbourne these past few weeks, it’s been  hard to get away from the Australian Open tennis. That means it’s even harder to get away from Roger Federer : that’s for fans _ it’s even harder if you’re Jo-Wilfried Tsonga or Andy Murray.

Federer won his fourth Australian Open, a record 16^th Grand Slam title overall, with such imperious ease that we (not to mention Jo, Andy and everyone else in the great man’s wake) wonder when his reign will ever end.

Afterwards, in a long post-match interview on Channel 7, Federer spoke of regaining a feeling of confidence which had been rattled in recent years by an illness (glandular fever at the start of 2008), an injury (back problems the following year) and the emergence of new opponents such as Rafael Nadal and Murray.

Both the latter have an edge over Federer head-to-head, but he is still king when it matters. The Australian Open win, for example, brought the Federer-Murray scoreline to 5-6 but, significantly, the only two meetings in a grand slam final have seen Federer win in straight sets.

Federer said he’d returned to his highest level and credited the likes of Murray and Nadal for helping him lift his game.

“I feel, like, obviously I’m being pushed a great deal by the new generation coming up. They’ve made me a better player, because I think this has been one of my finest performances in a long time, or maybe forever.

A sports psychologist (or sports commentator) might say Federer is back in his comfort zone. To which we might add, if Federer is in his comfort zone, no-one else is in theirs!

Federer’s comfort zone encompasses all surfaces. He won his first French Open title on clay in 2009, dominates on grass at Wimbledon and is a master of the hardcourts at Flushing Meadow and Melbourne Park.

More commonly in tennis, until 20 years ago anyway, the comfort zone applied to one or other of the surfaces, principally clay or grass. Clay with its slower pace, favours ground strokes, patience and endurance. Grass was more a serve and volley affair. Many players, even at the very top, excelled in one but were comparative dunces at the other.

Ivan Lendl once famously commented after an early-round Wimbledon defeat:  “Grass is for the cows” (he subsequently reached a final). Gustavo Kuerten won three times at the French, but eventually threatened to boycott Wimbledon if the seedings weren’t taken off the computer. He didn’t play there in 2001

Other clay court specialists such as Guillermo Vilas, Thomas Muster and Andres Gomez, although they turned up at Roland Garros religiously, often missed Wimbledon.

All this tennis thinking prompted me to think of examples of ‘the zone’ in athletics. Closer to the Federer model would be those champions who turn up at an Olympics or world championships ready to win, but are more fallible in between.

Lasse Viren, winner of the Olympic distance double in both 1972 and 1976, would be a prime example there; so would Amercian Al Oerter, who won the discus four times in a row from 1956 to 1968, but was often beaten in between; or, in the latter part of his career, Carl Lewis. Lewis dominated across all events from 1984 to 1990, but won his world championships 100 metres in 1991 and his 1992 and 1996 Olympic long jump titles after earlier defeats.

Distance running _ with its multiple disciplines of track, road and cross-country _ throws up many examples of champions in one format who do not perform at anywhere near the same level on others. Grete Waitz won five world cross-country titles, a world championships marathon, but was a lesser force on the track (exacerbated, admittedly, by not having the opportunity to run beyond 3000 metres)

Waitz’s compatriot, Ingrid Kristiansen, was a superb marathoner and won a world championships at 10,000. She also won a world cross-country title in 1988, but was probably more of the Ivan Lendl mindset when it came to running on grass. Actually, that’s not quite fair: she was good, just not dominant.

Another world cross-country champion, France’s Annette Sergent, won the world event twice without ever being a major force on the track. The same could be said of John Ngugi, until he won the Olympic 5000 metres title in 1988.

In Australian terms, Steve Moneghetti and Rob de Castella were great all-round distance runners, but Lisa Ondieki had no significant record in cross-country, though she excelled on road and track.

And Benita Willis, our only world cross-country champion. Benita holds all the Australian track records _ 3000, 5000 and 10,000 _ but does not have an international track result which compares to a world cross-country title. As she showed by bouncing back from a disastrous Zatopek 10,000 to win the world cross-country selection trial and by her 11^th in the 2008 world race after a patchy build-up, when Benita runs over the country, she is undeniably in her comfort zone.