There's an implausible unscripted beauty, a sense of rightness that settles when almost 20 years of the fiercest, most competitive rivalry in sports ended up with its two contenders fighting on the same side of the net rather than opposite each other for their final match.
Federer, personally requesting his greatest rival to be his partner in his last professional match weeks before his retirement announcement, and Nadal, dropping everything and coming out of an injury break to be there for the final time, are a once in a century reminder not only of the beauty of sports, but of humanity, of understanding that sharing the journey constitutes something much larger than the sum of our own parts.
By choosing to remember their legacies as now forever intertwined rather than on opposite sides of history, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have transcended wins and losses, defeats and victories, personal triumphs and disasters.
Because for the first and last time,
Everybody wins.
(2004-2022)
