KEY POINTS:
Sports hero-worship is not always a rational business.
Take John McEnroe for instance. I would pay whatever the time-travel price to sit at a court somewhere and watch McEnroe in his shambolic pomp, tearing his hair out and everyone else apart.
McEnroe was loathed by the establishment, supposedly,
and by many fans and tennis aficionados for his outrageous outbursts which took unsportsmanlike behaviour to a new global level.
If McEnroe had put his name to a tennis racket or sports shoe, and if it was properly named, it would have been called the Yell, or the Outburst or definitely the Scream, as the art-collecting McEnroe might have liked. One of those classic and mundane tennis brand names like Volley would have been totally inappropriate.
On one hand, McEnroe exposed the often poor standards of tennis officiating, but on the other hand he also exposed his own poor standards of behaviour and the demons within.
And I loved him. Tennis just hasn't been the same since Super Mac, or Super Brat, qualified as an old master.
He was mesmerising, fascinating, dangerous and a brilliant tennis player. Man, he could play.
I could point to the artistry of his game as a get-out clause, as a way of justifying my admiration for someone whose behaviour I've deemed not good enough in others.
If an overpaid soccer player carried on the way McEnroe did at times, this column would be outraged.
I don't have a decent excuse for this double standard, except that no one is perfect. And I'm not talking McEnroe here.
In truth McEnroe was so bad at times that there is no way of justifying any worship of him. It is what it is, and I even found, and still find, the McEnroe the world sees as likeable.
I suppose it is like life itself, that people's attraction to others is not always completely rational, and can be irrational.
McEnroe will always be up there, alongside other personal favourites like the English cricket batsman David Gower, our own cricket maestro Richard Hadlee, Christian Cullen, Bryan Williams, film clips of George Best and Muhammad Ali, the Swiss Miss Martina Hingis, and the anticipation I feel whenever Wayne Rooney gets near the ball, as providing my most cherished viewing of sport.
Those aforementioned favourites are easily explainable of course. I beg forgiveness on this one though, because I could watch McEnroe - bonus tantrums included - for hours.
Then there is another category, the player I adore to watch, to an addictive level, yet don't like in terms of the person I see, or the one he publicly presents. Yes, Tiger Woods.
Tiger and his bovver-boy caddy Steve Williams are a particularly unattractive coupling.
Woods is distinctly ungracious to my mind, self-absorbed, and high and mighty when it comes to others who cross his path. Any humour is self serving.
The whole golf and sporting world bows before the high priest of the pressure putt, something Woods appears to accept as his right and with disdain. He is a relentless chaser of history yet adds nothing to the character-filled legend of the game.
Woods can be viewed as an unattractive machine, but so are train engines and people are fascinated by those. It is Tiger's machine-like ability to do the job under pressure which becomes so mesmerising. He has put the Jack Nicklaus record up there in lights by declaring he is out to smash it down. So he gives us a chance to witness history - I don't really like Tiger, yet find myself rooting for him on golf's big Monday mornings.
Which brings us to Roger Federer, who stands for sheer class.
My conscience is clear here. He is, without doubt, the greatest tennis player in the post-wooden racket era with wooden-racket era behaviour to match. Any smashing he does is confined to the over-head shot.
It is spellbinding to watch someone who is so good at what they do perform and behave to such high standards under the public glare and what must be a lot of self-imposed pressure.
Many of us believed, before Federer came along, that power would switch the lights out on tennis. He restored the faith, put beauty and elegance back into tennis, showed that artistry could prevail.
His sublime performance over the weekend in dismantling Marat Safin at the Australian Open was typical.
I sincerely hope Federer wins two more grand slam titles and thus surpasses the Pete Sampras total of 14 because he deserves a record about which he has made little fuss. Nothing against Sampras on this score, because he is also a fine man, but Federer is in a different league as a player.
As I have said, this sports-fan business is a strange game, because a tennis nut who sits not far from here sneered a little at my Federer adulation, suggesting the Swiss star lacked an interesting character.
Each to our own in this inexact science of the X-factor. I will also say that from my own experience in the sports game, public personas are just that.
Contradictions abound. For all of his admirable and elegant brilliance, in my books watching Federer still ranks second to witnessing a despicable Mac on attack.
