"SORRY, mate." It is more than appropriate that the two words most associated with Patrick Rafter - which arrived after every awry ball toss -- should signify decency, fair play and good humour, for they are a reasonable definition of him as a man.
As Rafter, 29 this month, abandons tennis indefinitely - his body having reached its used-by date, his mind exhausted by tennis' unending tussles - he leaves behind the most unique of legacies. His grace as a man overshadowed his art as a player.
Everything about Rafter, his game (archaic serve and volley) and manner, suggested he had taken an inadvertent ride in HG Wells' time-machine. He seemed to fit more an era when men played with wooden rackets, clad in white flannels and were addressed as Mister. A gentler, kinder time. Instead he appeared a lost soul among tennis' petulant modern mob: while Yevgeny Kafelnikov complained at the Australian Open this year about inadequate prize money, Rafter sent a ball boy up to the stands during a match to hand one of his shirts to a man in a wheelchair. Maybe he was a reminder of how tennis had changed, and that not all of it was progress.
Reviewing Rafter's life and career is an interesting exercise, for many lessons are to be derived from it. First among those concerns the idea of greatness. Great player is a label handed out in corner stores these days, to any man who wins a Grand Slam title, takes seven wickets in a Test match or sweats his way to a single Olympic gold. It is a marker cheapened by its prolific use and points to our lazy vocabulary.
Players have inspired moments, when they reach out to fleetingly touch the sun, and we are blinded by their transitory dazzle.
But those are but flirtations with greatness (for India, V. V. S. Laxman's 281 versus Australia is a beautiful example of a good player finding momentary greatness). To hold that standard over time, to not just equal an occasion but own it repeatedly, to challenge the frontiers of sporting possibility in different time zones and on varying surfaces, is when a player embraces greatness in its true definition (In India, think Gavaskar).
Andre Agassi with seven Grand Slam titles, on all surfaces, is a great player. Boris Becker with six arguably qualifies. Rafter, if we strip away the accompanying sentiment, does not. Two US Open titles, and 11 overall across 10 ten years (admittedly interrupted by constant injury to the shoulder and wrist) is an inadequate accomplishment (after all, Kafelnikov has two Grand Slam titles and 24 titles, and Gustavo Kuerten three Grand Slam titles and 16 tour titles). Pete Sampras does not require debate.
But one would travel a considerable distance to watch Rafter as one might to avoid Sebastien Grosjean, and therein lay his appeal. His game was all arcs and angles, full of rushes of breath and feet and fullstop volleys, an athletic explorer in a land of the timid: he used the entire court in a way the game demanded. You could tell Rafter had been on court against another metronomic baseliner just by the scuff marks on the front of the court. His serve kicked more dangerously than an irate mule, his volleys ended all stroke conversations, and he provided a master class in how to hit the backhand overhead.
Rafter excited the senses; he made men put down their books (and women their knitting), a handsome man playing a handsome game.
But there have been numerous good players and great ones; and too few noble ones. And it is here that Rafter's legacy is powerful, for he dismantled so many cliches we hold dear. We are told that in the cauldron of modern competition, full of fiery spirited men with large, naked ambitions, that decency has no place. Rafter disabused us of such silly notions.
In 1997, he stepped forth to reverse a line call when playing Russian Andrei Cherkasov which effectively lost him the match. Twice he lost heartbreaking Wimbledon finals, twice he hurt, but camouflaged his pain with an enduring grace.
After defeat to Sampras in the 2000 final, one he should have won, he admitted he choked, uttering a word that usually leaves players in a rash. When Goran Ivanisevic broke his heart this year, he offered only kind words to the Croat. Later, in the press room, reminded again how inspirational it was that Goran should win after all these years, Rafter smiled and quipped, yeah, but "at the expense of me."
Professional sport is hard, but it is also suffocated by hype, in the building of men who win athletic contests into incomparable heroes; sporting encounters gather an enhanced gladiatorial dimension and are breathlessly described as matters of life and death. We all do it, but much of it is a nonsense.
Rafter again mocked these beliefs. You cannot win a Grand Slam, let alone two, or reach all four Grand Slam semi-finals, without a convincing desire and single-minded focus, yet Rafter did not seem to measure his life or self-worth by what transpired solely on the tennis court. He did not moan about hard life is, instead he understood (and alas so few others do) that he was privileged.
Perhaps it was why when he won the 1997 US Open, he donated $(A) 300,000 to the Marter Hospital in Brisbane; when he won again in 1998, he sent another $(A) 300,000 to the hospital's Starlight Foundation section for terminally ill children; later he founded the Patrick Rafter Cherish the Children Foundation.
He was honoured for it - the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award twice, the Arthur Ashe Humanitarian of the Year award and the Diploma of Honor from the International Committee for Fair Play - but it's hard to find a press conference where he brought it up. He wore this true heroism lightly, and though he was no saint (he can be snippy, and sarcastic, and once turned up hungover for a Davis Cup match, though it was a dead rubber) in a time of sinners he illuminated the game with his presence. It is hard not to make too much of Rafter.
His effect oddly enough is best seen in his own country; they adore him and it is an un-Australian virtue. Australia is a land of muscular handshakes, where manliness is measured in beers quaffed. Harold Pinter, once drew a lovely picture, when he wrote of an Australian cricket team, "After lunch, the Australians, arrogant, jocular, muscular, larking down the pavilion steps. They waited, hurling the ball about, eight feet tall." These are a tough, resilient and proud people not given to sentimental displays; yet with Rafter they are prone to pull to pull out their hankies and snort loudly. He has travelled beyond respect to find their affection.
A fortnight ago, at a Sport Australia Hall of Fame function, he was given The Don award. It is not for the best athlete of the year, but for the athlete who by his example has been the most inspirational. Considering Rafter won just one tournament this year, and lost the Wimbledon and Davis Cup finals the award tells its own emotional tale. Australia, much of the tennis world, and this writer, will mourn his absence. And as he goes, it is appropriate, that his words return to haunt us.
For you see, we're sorry too, mate.
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