BASEL, SWITZERLAND — This might sound almost extraterrestrial to Americans and especially Angelenos, but Roger Federer's hometown seems to boast no outward images of, well, Roger Federer.
Billboards large and small include an anonymous happy couple alongside wedges of Gruyere cheese, anonymous men on a boat drinking sparkling water, an anonymous couple lying on a beach in the surf, two hairdressers of possible local prominence and an anonymous burgundy Fiat, but no visible Federer.
On sidewalks, on buses, on the extensive tram system, there's no sign of Federer but plenty of \o7Jasper Johns\f7, the American painter who never won Wimbledon but whose "Target With Four Faces" (1953), now showing at the Kunstmuseum, appears on posters all over town.
A soda ad in the train station features ... three Swiss soccer players.
If you wonder how a person could hog the No. 1 spot in tennis for 177 weeks with a striking lack of imperiousness, here might lie a clue.
If you wonder how somebody can hoard 10 of the last 16 tennis majors, stockpile the last four Wimbledon men's singles titles, begin the 2007 Wimbledon on Monday up against the field but also against Bjorn Borg and his record five straight, yet maintain popularity among peers while refusing to reside at the intersection of prima and donna ...
Basel helps explain.
"Idolizing heroes -- the Swiss, they're not so comfortable with that," said Hans-Dieter Gerber, the Swiss collection manager for a Basel sports museum specializing in soccer, adding, "I think it's more difficult for Swiss people to express publicly their feelings in such a way."
Madeleine Barlocher has heard it before.
"You know, I mean, at the beginning, a lot of people said, 'Why don't you make more out of Roger here in Switzerland?' " said Barlocher of Tennis Club Old Boys, which Federer began to frequent at age 8 or 9. "I guess here we are a little bit different. We don't want to make money out of someone.... We don't think in this way."
"People are not very euphoric," said Emmanuel Marmillod, who teaches tennis to kids at the club, adding that they're not nationalistic and "keep everything in the head."
"Something is special here," he said. "I don't know what it is."
"They're very proud of him, especially the German Swiss," said Lynette Federer, the champion's mother. "They're really proud, but they don't speak it out loud."
