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Sunday, June 11, 2006

Small detail, big difference?

It's the Federer vs Nadal tennis final. 3 hours into the match. Nadal is winning 2-1 sets and 5-4 games and he was serving to win the championship. Federer didn't play really well on the past 2 sets, and at that game he was down 30-15, only two points away of losing.

They start the point, and Nadal puts a lot of pressure on him. Nadal shoots in his Federer's backhand; Federer makes a weak backhand; the ball touches the net and barely falls on the other side, in Nadal's court; Nadal reaches the ball on time but he cannot make a very good strike, and eventually he looses the point.

Had the ball been a few millimeters below, Federer would have lost the point and most likely the championship too. But now he won that game, and he won the next one. From losing, is is now 6-6 and they play the tiebreak...

3h 13m : Federer lost both of his points in his serve, now he is down 4-2 in the tiebreak and Nadal is serving...

3h 14m: Another error by Federer... down 5-2 now...

3h 15m: Nice play, 5-3...

3h 16m: Another great point... 5-4... now Nadal serves and he is two points away from the championship...

3h 17m: Nadal wins the point... 6-4... double championship point now!

3h 18m: Nadal made it! He beat Federer once again, and won the Roland Garros once again as last year. And he is only 20 years old.



Can small details like that make a difference in life? Can the yes or no outcome of a single event change the route of one's life? Sure, life is the large scale sum of many many tiny details, but do the details average out overall or is it that some of them are more important than other and can affect the large scale outcome? In american movies we always see a single last-second decision can change the ending of a movie and get the hero killed or saved, but is real life like that?

I refuse to believe so.

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