Why Roger Federer is a time traveller's companion 

The best news I received last July was not that Roger Federer can still play five sets - though yes, that was good too - but that he hopes to see us next year. When the Wimbledon final ended after we saw glimpses of an old man performing his younger dog tricks, and it came to the speeches, Federer delivered a pretty good shot: "See you next year".

It wasn't the "see you next year" of a 20-something for whom this is a crowd-pleasing platitude or a verbal tic. It was the assertion of one man staring down time. Novak Djokovic had won that evening, but Federer had offered us enough moments for rationalising hope. He had also offered no hints of the R-word.

Federer is an old man. Next month, he will turn 34. He has already scratched himself into the records as the oldest Wimbledon finalist since Ken Rosewall in 1974. If this was a Jane Austen novel, by now he'd have been banished into an ignominious union with Mr Collins. Which would be sad, unless of course we hadn't realised yet that he was Mr Collins himself - a farcical sideshow in someone else's story.

Based on current evidence, that might not be the case yet. Is it his time to sizzle into the sunset, custom-made white jacket in hand? Or is there some fuel still left for a swan-singing slam? These are questions that, at the present time, remain unanswered. But with Wimbledon now through to its second weekend, and Federer playing in cliché-exhausting fashion, the answers remain mere hours away.

In the early years, Federer was, to put it politely, a marvel. He invented new angles. He prompted a renewed worship of the single-handed backhand. He pounded out other-worldly forehands. Along the way, he reinvented unflappability. All of these have been time-worn reasons for supporting Federer. And somewhere in these past two weeks, he showed us he could still do many of these things. For instance, in Friday's semi-final, he produced such pretty statistics as 56 winners, 20 aces, a 76 per cent first serve percentage.

So to say that Federer is dignified or aesthetically arresting or superhuman, or to even not say any of these things and be at a loss for words is to only retread old ground. There are no new tennis reasons for supporting the man. But I offer you a different one, a selfish one: Roger Federer as time machine.

The receding prowess of an athlete brings not just the end of viewing pleasure or the vacant emptiness of nostalgia, but the deepening sense of the fan's own mortality. When Federer grows old, we grow old with him. When Federer takes us from 2015 to 2005 in the space of three hours, we sign up for the ride.

It is an interesting time to be a Federer fan. To be watching him in 2015 at a time of recalibrated expectations is to acknowledge his mortality whilst also hoping he can transcend it, in the process, taking you along.

This is a place we arrived at via that soupy mess of a year, 2013, when he lost everything in sight and then continued to lose before meeting Nadal in the semi-finals of a rejuvenated run at the Australian Open, before what else - losing again.

The cycle of hope-dashed hope-hope again-dashed again had its early roots in Wimbledon 2013. In the iridescent glare of the television set, Federer is fading. His vanquisher, Stakhovsky, never heard of before and never heard of since, except possibly as a quiz question in the sports round, is not just giving fight, he is giving fight like he thinks he can win. Federer tumbles out, and falls directly on to the freshly sharpened knives of detractors.

Soon after, there is something new to mourn; the passing of Federer in round four of that year's US Open, where Tommy Robredo, takes his place as the villain. The lower-seeded, one-time also-rans pass through the revolving doors of victory, heaping indignities on a rapidly ageing former world number one.

This is the juncture for the tennis fan of a certain generation to take a long, hard look in the mirror and wonder: Is it all beginning to unravel? Are we going past our third decade, in the televised company of a fading genius? It's that moment to stop and think: "There will never be an athlete older than me, who became awesome before I grew up, and that is directly proportional to how old I feel".

But it is the job of the fan to hope. When you enter into a contract with an athlete or team of your choice, you voluntarily cede control. That is stating the obvious. As is the equally in-your-face reality that at the nub of any sporting career is its essential briefness. Yet, to suspend the passage of time within the cornucopia of someone else's career is to conquer the future, just for a while.

It is the moment in which fanship becomes a means to time travel and Federer the time machine of choice. It is Federer one turns to stall time, because it was he who serially offered glimpses of immortality. When he became human, we became human with him. When he became divine, we ascended to heaven, trailing in chariots of his silken whiplashes.

And so we measure out hope, one match at a time. We hope when he reaches the Italian Open finals in May. We hope when he makes the tour finals last November in London. We hope when he wins Halle ahead of Wimbledon last month. We allow incremental hope to colour all potential match-ups despite the sometimes cruel logic of seedings in anno dominis 2013, 2014 and until the present day. But the years of our lord show us a shrunken lord, taking us tantalisingly close to the precipice of the past, but often pulling back from the brink. And here we are, back on grass, hoping again.

To return to that scene at Wimbledon 2014, I give you a companion scene that came not long after. Federer playing, and winning another five-set match in a grand slam: the US Open quarterfinals 2014. But then he crashes out in the semis. Another slam goes by and we are left thinking, he may never make it this far again. Let us take our rosaries and move along, there is nothing to see here. But of course, that's not the public position one takes. One soldiers on, counting down the next birthday, putting hexes on Nadal and waiting for the next slam.

What Federer did on Friday was bring to bear the full and complete boxed set, greatest hits edition of himself. On Sunday, he will take the court for his 26th slam final. He will come into the match with seven Wimbledon titles, and aim to leave with one more. He will be carrying aloft collective aspirations to time travel. Off we go then, to climb aboard the bandwagon of hope, our destination: 2006. Roger, if you win one more, I swear I will feel like I'm 21 again.