Post by Annie on Jun 13, 2005 19:58:39 GMT 3
THE “EXEPTIONALLY GIFTED” COMPLEX
Marat Safin and Roger Federer
L’EQUIPE MAGAZINE (France), 05/24/2003
By Jean Issartel
“Frankly, I would not like to be Marat Safin, it must be very tough to have such a big talent with such a devious/tortuous mind. Roger Federer seems to accept more his gift, but as far as I know it has not always been the same. And sometimes, he still lives some frustrations because of his talent” Only Mats Wilander may feels sorry for genius.[...] Marat is his friend “one of the best”, but Mats used to coach him and he sized up at which point Marat is a victim ofthe “ exceptionally gifted complex”.
“Either Roger Federer’s sydrome is not exactly the same or he is less struck down by the complex” And Marc Rosset knows what he is talking about and what he
is nicely making fun of. The captain of the Swiss Davis Cup team is a very good friend of Federer and he used to coach Safin : he is also aware of the Russian’s
cerebral’s/mental’s bend/intricacies and his unbelievable potential. Wilander knows it too : “for sure, Roger and Marat are the two most talented guys on the
tour. But their talents are totally different . “Marat, it’s a physical gift, says Rosset. He is the prototype of the player of the future : enough tall to serve strong and to have a good wingspread/scope but not too tall to move well on the court; powerful to hit the ball strong but not too powerful to be slender and fluid. In plus he has a perfect timing and a good eye. Nobody can hit as strong as Marat. Roger is brilliant because he can invent wonderful shots and he feels very good his game [...]. As far as I know, Nobody has as much delicacy/finesse and good feeling as Roger. And he has those shots... When I saw Roger practicing, I saw him making some shots that I had never seen before. He can do all he shots in tennis and probably some others that don’t belong to this sport ...Roger summarizes this ability with modesty and simplicity : “ I have a hand, and a good hand ... And I am also fluid and relaxed on the court, maybe because of this, people say that I am talented. It’s difficult for me to talk about hit, but it’s true that I can do a lot of things with a racket. What people have difficulty in understanding it’s that this talent could also be a drawback ...”
Marat Safin has other words to explain it. He talks with passion as always when he speaks of something which really touches him ,when he talks about something
that he is burning to share or to make understand : “But, who understand me ? How many people ? What I want, sometimes I don’t know it myself ... that’s why I can understand that people have difficulties in grasping me. What I want is to succeed to hit every shot as the best of all my shots. I want to achieve my perfection. And I want it too often. That is what wears me down, that is what drives me crazy. Nobody knows what happen in my brain, so everybody says that I am mad. Maybe ... but me I love this game too much, I love too much feeling that I am “in the zone”, I love feeling that I am faithful/ that I remain true to what I have in my brain as a model. It’s so good to feel it that I have difficulties in accepting to play under this feeling.” As Mats Wilander explains, the problem is that “ Marat fixes the bar to high (I don’t know if it’s correct English, but it means that Marat is a bit too ambitious) . His reference match is his victory against Pete Sampras in the final of the US Open 2000 and it’s impossible to have the perfection as a model/as a reference, otherwise you feel tired, it gets on your nerves and you lose”. “(Does it get on my nerves?) It is 1000 times worse, laughs Marat, Tennis when it comes as I want, I adore it. But when I am not playing that well, it’s horrible and I start to call everything into question. I told myself : “ But shit! What am I doing here? Shit! What is my life? Look at your game, look at what you’re doing, it’s crap!” I do suffer in those moments.”
And sometimes, when Marat is suffering, he shortens his pain. That’s get on Mats Wilander’s nerves : “Genius as him can win 6-1 6-1 9 times in a row against
the same player and lose the 10th time because it’s a little bit more tight. Me against the same player I won 10 times in a row and I broke him almost always at
the same moment of the match. The too much gifted players forget too much that there is a guy in front of him, they think that they are playing golf that’s why
it surprises them when the ball comes back too often. So, they give up because they are afraid of having to take/to stand the defeat”.
To give up in a match? Yes, it happened to Marat to lose voluntarily a match in order to not have to assume the fact that he had been defeated. Marc Rosset
understands it, he did it before : “ Tennis is a psychological sport. Every week you are disappointed, unless you win a tournament. The disappointment is a part
of the life of a champion and you have an other chance the week after. Me I sometimes gave up in my matches, because when you give up it’s not a defeat,
it’s a way to keep your confidence capital. Marat is like that too, he is temperamental, like Goran Ivanisevic. The problem is that after the event, you start to think too much of what you did, you remind you of all the opportunities you missed because you were too damn stupid to fight, to accept the prospect of being defeated. Isn’t it weird to told yourself “ I’ m going to lose because I don’t accept the prospect to be defeated, because I am afraid of this idea, because this prospect makes me panicking so much that it eats/that I lose all my lucidity”. To lose intentionally in order to not being defeated ... “ This is what happened to Marat in the final of the Australian Open 2002. “Since, swear both Rosset and Wilander, Marat became aware that it’s not a shame to be defeated, but that it’is a shame to not fight” .
Federer is “too well educated to act like that, says Rosset, he is too honest and to give up it’s like to lie to himself. Roger never lies”. Federer’s coach
Peter Lundgren follows Marc “Roger is a regular guy/ a good sort. He lives the things as a normal person while he has an exceptionally gift. That was by the
way the origin of his problems. It’s tough to heard people told you, since your childhood, ”you’re a genius”,” you’ll be the number one”. Roger is frank and
honest. He knows that he has a gift, but he wasn’t capable of standing this pressure ... When he was a kid, he used to break rackets. Thanks to a
psychologist this kind of problem is from the past. He is on the good/right way.
He starts to be less negative , thinking more of what he succeed than of what he failed. He is more disciplined, he really knows what he wants and what he has to
do to reach his goal ...”. Above all, he knows what he mustn’t do. According to Marc Rosset “ sometimes Roger falls in the easy way. He dominates the match, he
controls the match but he forgets to hammer in the nail. And when the situation turns against him, he becomes crazy. In fact, Roger has to learn to be more
nasty, to accept to make ugly matches to win. In a Grand Slam, it’s normal and obvious to have a bad day, and this is this day which makes the difference. This
is on this day that Roger has to accept to be a normal player, a player who has to win without exciting the crowd, without inventing shots ... I think he has
understood it and he is going to do it.”
In that case, Roger would have been right to say that “ he found himself”, that he has ”understood that miraculous shots excite the crowd but not necessarily
help to win a match” ... In fact he stops to ruin his life, to ruin his game. He has digested his gift and “start/get to work”. According to Rosset : “What
impressed me most in Roger it’s his physical progress. Now he can succeed because he has the legs to express his talent. You can especially notice this progress with his backhand, now that he moves better his backhand his better and more dangerous. Thanks to this work and those progress Roger became stronger mentally. Now, what he needs is to defeat Hewitt one or two times. The day he would gave done that, he would be on the road to the number one place. And for him it would be a straight line.” For Marat, it seems to be more complicated And even more if he follows Rosset’s method : “ You put Hewitt’s brain in to Marat’s body and you have the number one in the world until 2010. Well as I know well the guy(Marat), even if the transplant was possible, it would probably have a massive and fast rejection”. Yes, Marat Safin is complicated. “Complicated? It’s worst than complicated, I am Russian” Marat laughs. Rosset less, even tough ...
“Marat, if he follows through his possibilities, nobody can compete with him,even Roger. But it depends on the desire to go to the fight that Marat will have, maybe Marat doesn’t love the tennis enough, maybe he doesn’t want to dominate this sport and to fall in a kind of slavery with regard to the performance. He is Russian, and he is right in pointing this out. We must not forget that he is Russian. The lack is inscribing in his mentality, the deprivation of freedom too and now that he is totally free, he will never accept to scarify a part of his total independence even if it’s in order to join the History of the Sport. In concrete terms, even if you’re close to him, even if totally trusts you, you can’t come to tell him “ you have to do this, you have to work like that”. If you speak to him like this it means that you want him to do the contrary of what you said. Unfortunately, as Marat is crafty, sometimes he doesn’t do what you ask, but he doesn’t do totally the opposite. He hates the obligation (I didn’t find the good translation for : “Marat, l’obligation ça le braque” sorry). Mats Wilander knows it very well : “It seemed logical to associate myself with Marat in order to pass/give him the qualities that I had when I was a player : the tactic, the perseverance , the persistence. People said that all those qualities associated with Marat’s talent would help him a lot to achieve the highest top. It didn’t worked as it was supposed to work. Maybe Marat needs a coach as crazy as him ... We separated ourselves admitting failure. Two events made us become aware that our duo couldn’t work. The first one happened when I saw him hitting a shot between his legs just after he had been lobed at 5/4 in the last set while he could have hit a conventional shot but a more efficient shot. I told him that I didn’t understand his behaviour and that it was a lack of respect towards the game, toward the history of the game and the biggest champions, towards his opponent and above all towards himself .
He answered that from his point of view it was the opposite. Then during an other match, he tried to hit an ace on his second ball at 5/5, he missed and he
lost. That’s when I understood, and he understood it too, that it would be better to stay the best friend of the world than to work together ... I think he
learnt 2 or 3 things with me, but I am sure that if I still have something to bring to his game or to his man’s life it would be as a friend, not as a coach”.
Anyway, this is the only one method with Marat. He banishes the word “coach” from his vocabulary. He “only listens to his friends” and he “only trusts his
friends”. He has only few friends, which is surprising for such an attractive person. Federer is also engaging. “That’s why people are so impatient with them.
That’s why everybody want to see them on top very quickly, says Lundgren. They have beautiful games, they are spontaneous and nice. That’s why nobody can wait to see them being number one and number two in the world, in the final of all the Grand Slams. But we have to give them time ... ”The time they need to accept to be so much gifted and also to accept to not always be perfect. On this road, Roger seems to be a little bit ahead of Marat. Rosset dares to say that “it’s because of his education and his humility”. It’s also because of the tragedy Roger lived when his friend and coach Peter Carter died in a car crash last summer. This event changed Roger because ,as he said, with the pain, a “new maturity came”. It’s cold the adulthood, simply.
Translated by Lola
Marat Safin and Roger Federer
L’EQUIPE MAGAZINE (France), 05/24/2003
By Jean Issartel
“Frankly, I would not like to be Marat Safin, it must be very tough to have such a big talent with such a devious/tortuous mind. Roger Federer seems to accept more his gift, but as far as I know it has not always been the same. And sometimes, he still lives some frustrations because of his talent” Only Mats Wilander may feels sorry for genius.[...] Marat is his friend “one of the best”, but Mats used to coach him and he sized up at which point Marat is a victim ofthe “ exceptionally gifted complex”.
“Either Roger Federer’s sydrome is not exactly the same or he is less struck down by the complex” And Marc Rosset knows what he is talking about and what he
is nicely making fun of. The captain of the Swiss Davis Cup team is a very good friend of Federer and he used to coach Safin : he is also aware of the Russian’s
cerebral’s/mental’s bend/intricacies and his unbelievable potential. Wilander knows it too : “for sure, Roger and Marat are the two most talented guys on the
tour. But their talents are totally different . “Marat, it’s a physical gift, says Rosset. He is the prototype of the player of the future : enough tall to serve strong and to have a good wingspread/scope but not too tall to move well on the court; powerful to hit the ball strong but not too powerful to be slender and fluid. In plus he has a perfect timing and a good eye. Nobody can hit as strong as Marat. Roger is brilliant because he can invent wonderful shots and he feels very good his game [...]. As far as I know, Nobody has as much delicacy/finesse and good feeling as Roger. And he has those shots... When I saw Roger practicing, I saw him making some shots that I had never seen before. He can do all he shots in tennis and probably some others that don’t belong to this sport ...Roger summarizes this ability with modesty and simplicity : “ I have a hand, and a good hand ... And I am also fluid and relaxed on the court, maybe because of this, people say that I am talented. It’s difficult for me to talk about hit, but it’s true that I can do a lot of things with a racket. What people have difficulty in understanding it’s that this talent could also be a drawback ...”
Marat Safin has other words to explain it. He talks with passion as always when he speaks of something which really touches him ,when he talks about something
that he is burning to share or to make understand : “But, who understand me ? How many people ? What I want, sometimes I don’t know it myself ... that’s why I can understand that people have difficulties in grasping me. What I want is to succeed to hit every shot as the best of all my shots. I want to achieve my perfection. And I want it too often. That is what wears me down, that is what drives me crazy. Nobody knows what happen in my brain, so everybody says that I am mad. Maybe ... but me I love this game too much, I love too much feeling that I am “in the zone”, I love feeling that I am faithful/ that I remain true to what I have in my brain as a model. It’s so good to feel it that I have difficulties in accepting to play under this feeling.” As Mats Wilander explains, the problem is that “ Marat fixes the bar to high (I don’t know if it’s correct English, but it means that Marat is a bit too ambitious) . His reference match is his victory against Pete Sampras in the final of the US Open 2000 and it’s impossible to have the perfection as a model/as a reference, otherwise you feel tired, it gets on your nerves and you lose”. “(Does it get on my nerves?) It is 1000 times worse, laughs Marat, Tennis when it comes as I want, I adore it. But when I am not playing that well, it’s horrible and I start to call everything into question. I told myself : “ But shit! What am I doing here? Shit! What is my life? Look at your game, look at what you’re doing, it’s crap!” I do suffer in those moments.”
And sometimes, when Marat is suffering, he shortens his pain. That’s get on Mats Wilander’s nerves : “Genius as him can win 6-1 6-1 9 times in a row against
the same player and lose the 10th time because it’s a little bit more tight. Me against the same player I won 10 times in a row and I broke him almost always at
the same moment of the match. The too much gifted players forget too much that there is a guy in front of him, they think that they are playing golf that’s why
it surprises them when the ball comes back too often. So, they give up because they are afraid of having to take/to stand the defeat”.
To give up in a match? Yes, it happened to Marat to lose voluntarily a match in order to not have to assume the fact that he had been defeated. Marc Rosset
understands it, he did it before : “ Tennis is a psychological sport. Every week you are disappointed, unless you win a tournament. The disappointment is a part
of the life of a champion and you have an other chance the week after. Me I sometimes gave up in my matches, because when you give up it’s not a defeat,
it’s a way to keep your confidence capital. Marat is like that too, he is temperamental, like Goran Ivanisevic. The problem is that after the event, you start to think too much of what you did, you remind you of all the opportunities you missed because you were too damn stupid to fight, to accept the prospect of being defeated. Isn’t it weird to told yourself “ I’ m going to lose because I don’t accept the prospect to be defeated, because I am afraid of this idea, because this prospect makes me panicking so much that it eats/that I lose all my lucidity”. To lose intentionally in order to not being defeated ... “ This is what happened to Marat in the final of the Australian Open 2002. “Since, swear both Rosset and Wilander, Marat became aware that it’s not a shame to be defeated, but that it’is a shame to not fight” .
Federer is “too well educated to act like that, says Rosset, he is too honest and to give up it’s like to lie to himself. Roger never lies”. Federer’s coach
Peter Lundgren follows Marc “Roger is a regular guy/ a good sort. He lives the things as a normal person while he has an exceptionally gift. That was by the
way the origin of his problems. It’s tough to heard people told you, since your childhood, ”you’re a genius”,” you’ll be the number one”. Roger is frank and
honest. He knows that he has a gift, but he wasn’t capable of standing this pressure ... When he was a kid, he used to break rackets. Thanks to a
psychologist this kind of problem is from the past. He is on the good/right way.
He starts to be less negative , thinking more of what he succeed than of what he failed. He is more disciplined, he really knows what he wants and what he has to
do to reach his goal ...”. Above all, he knows what he mustn’t do. According to Marc Rosset “ sometimes Roger falls in the easy way. He dominates the match, he
controls the match but he forgets to hammer in the nail. And when the situation turns against him, he becomes crazy. In fact, Roger has to learn to be more
nasty, to accept to make ugly matches to win. In a Grand Slam, it’s normal and obvious to have a bad day, and this is this day which makes the difference. This
is on this day that Roger has to accept to be a normal player, a player who has to win without exciting the crowd, without inventing shots ... I think he has
understood it and he is going to do it.”
In that case, Roger would have been right to say that “ he found himself”, that he has ”understood that miraculous shots excite the crowd but not necessarily
help to win a match” ... In fact he stops to ruin his life, to ruin his game. He has digested his gift and “start/get to work”. According to Rosset : “What
impressed me most in Roger it’s his physical progress. Now he can succeed because he has the legs to express his talent. You can especially notice this progress with his backhand, now that he moves better his backhand his better and more dangerous. Thanks to this work and those progress Roger became stronger mentally. Now, what he needs is to defeat Hewitt one or two times. The day he would gave done that, he would be on the road to the number one place. And for him it would be a straight line.” For Marat, it seems to be more complicated And even more if he follows Rosset’s method : “ You put Hewitt’s brain in to Marat’s body and you have the number one in the world until 2010. Well as I know well the guy(Marat), even if the transplant was possible, it would probably have a massive and fast rejection”. Yes, Marat Safin is complicated. “Complicated? It’s worst than complicated, I am Russian” Marat laughs. Rosset less, even tough ...
“Marat, if he follows through his possibilities, nobody can compete with him,even Roger. But it depends on the desire to go to the fight that Marat will have, maybe Marat doesn’t love the tennis enough, maybe he doesn’t want to dominate this sport and to fall in a kind of slavery with regard to the performance. He is Russian, and he is right in pointing this out. We must not forget that he is Russian. The lack is inscribing in his mentality, the deprivation of freedom too and now that he is totally free, he will never accept to scarify a part of his total independence even if it’s in order to join the History of the Sport. In concrete terms, even if you’re close to him, even if totally trusts you, you can’t come to tell him “ you have to do this, you have to work like that”. If you speak to him like this it means that you want him to do the contrary of what you said. Unfortunately, as Marat is crafty, sometimes he doesn’t do what you ask, but he doesn’t do totally the opposite. He hates the obligation (I didn’t find the good translation for : “Marat, l’obligation ça le braque” sorry). Mats Wilander knows it very well : “It seemed logical to associate myself with Marat in order to pass/give him the qualities that I had when I was a player : the tactic, the perseverance , the persistence. People said that all those qualities associated with Marat’s talent would help him a lot to achieve the highest top. It didn’t worked as it was supposed to work. Maybe Marat needs a coach as crazy as him ... We separated ourselves admitting failure. Two events made us become aware that our duo couldn’t work. The first one happened when I saw him hitting a shot between his legs just after he had been lobed at 5/4 in the last set while he could have hit a conventional shot but a more efficient shot. I told him that I didn’t understand his behaviour and that it was a lack of respect towards the game, toward the history of the game and the biggest champions, towards his opponent and above all towards himself .
He answered that from his point of view it was the opposite. Then during an other match, he tried to hit an ace on his second ball at 5/5, he missed and he
lost. That’s when I understood, and he understood it too, that it would be better to stay the best friend of the world than to work together ... I think he
learnt 2 or 3 things with me, but I am sure that if I still have something to bring to his game or to his man’s life it would be as a friend, not as a coach”.
Anyway, this is the only one method with Marat. He banishes the word “coach” from his vocabulary. He “only listens to his friends” and he “only trusts his
friends”. He has only few friends, which is surprising for such an attractive person. Federer is also engaging. “That’s why people are so impatient with them.
That’s why everybody want to see them on top very quickly, says Lundgren. They have beautiful games, they are spontaneous and nice. That’s why nobody can wait to see them being number one and number two in the world, in the final of all the Grand Slams. But we have to give them time ... ”The time they need to accept to be so much gifted and also to accept to not always be perfect. On this road, Roger seems to be a little bit ahead of Marat. Rosset dares to say that “it’s because of his education and his humility”. It’s also because of the tragedy Roger lived when his friend and coach Peter Carter died in a car crash last summer. This event changed Roger because ,as he said, with the pain, a “new maturity came”. It’s cold the adulthood, simply.
Translated by Lola
