The hardest thing in sport is to understand how good they are. Television does the stars of sport a disservice. On telly it seems that you or I could do it almost as well. You get no real idea of the power, the strength, the speed and, therefore, of the brilliance required to cope with these things.

In the confrontational sports, all seems possible. What's the big deal about hitting a six, scoring a goal or serving an ace? On television, you can't understand what it is like to oppose Brett Lee or Petr Cech or Roger Federer, so success seems almost within your grasp. So we watch and scoff at failure and say that our grannies could do better.

Formula One is worse. It looks like Scalextric. I remember being told at some grand prix: “You appreciate the difference between a Porsche and a Deux Chevaux? Well, the difference between a Porsche and a Formula One racing car is about twice that.”

But snooker is different. Watch it on television and you really can understand how they are so much better then you and me. Watching the World Championship with an annual unhealthy fascination, I am taken back to my days on local papers and post-work sessions at the Pot Black Centre in Clapham Junction. We didn't play like the pros. We had a radically different vocabulary of shots.

There was the bisector: an attempted pot that hits the cushion precisely equidistant between two pockets, so no one knows which you were aiming at. There was the treble and the quadruple: a cross-table double played with sufficient force so that if you miss, it might drop in on the third, or, in a frenzied zigzag, the fourth journey across the table.

Every shot was an attempted pot. Shots a pro wouldn't dare to try were routine. But then we didn't have to worry about leaving a ball. Why play a safety shot? Every ball was safe. A substantial break, worthy of sincere congratulations, involved a second red. A foul was frequently decisive.

Average frame time was about three quarters of an hour. But we weren't messing about. We tried very hard, revelling in the muted beauties of the game and the Newtonian dance of action and reaction.

Moral: the top sports players are not better than we imagine, they are better than we are capable of imagining.

Frame without fortune for my father

My father claims the record for the worst snooker shot ever played. He missed a short red - not the pocket, but the ball itself - gave a laugh of self-disgust, shouldered arms and turned to mark up the foul. The tip of his cue caught the light above the table and brought it crashing down on the baize.

Roger Federer's lapses a real tale of the unexpected

When we succeed in realising just how brilliant a top athlete really is, we forget that he is a human being. Roger Federer gave us a vivid reminder of his humanity in Monte Carlo this week. I am tempted to say that this is the most extraordinary match I have ever seen him play, but it wasn't.

The most recent Wimbledon final was certainly more extraordinary - the way he suddenly and decisively raised his game above mere brilliance in the crucial game of the final set was unforgettable.

But this week, bizarrely, Federer played like a human being. He played Rubén Ramírez Hidalgo, who is only ranked No17 in Spain, and was 5-1 down in the final set. He made 54 unforced errors in total. It was an extraordinary display of fundamental incompetence from the finest technician that ever lifted a racket.

He eventually won, confessed himself baffled and the next day he proceeded to play better than he has done all year to beat David Nalbandian in the quarter-finals. Either match would have been worth noting, but in close proximity the two were utterly baffling.

Whither Rodge? I can't wait to find out.

Mosley hardly good for business

It is deeply touching, the way that Max Mosley thinks that mere morality has a part to play in the running of a billion-dollar business. Mosley is still refusing to resign after the tabloid allegations of his 'Allo 'Allo-style romp with Yvette, Mimi, the flying helmet, the egg-visk and the vet celery. He claims, and rightly, that his goings-on were private and victimless and therefore nobody's business.

But there is a higher morality than morality, and it is called cash.

Bernie Ecclestone had weighed in against Mosley, not because he has done anything wicked but because it is bad for business. The car manufacturers behind Formula One don't like it. We are left with a meaty moral problem, but what Mosley has done is not bad. It is merely bad PR. And that is far more serious.

Officers of the law on shaky ground

I have been trying to get my head around rugby union's Experimental Law Variations, or ELVs. Basically, what they propose is - ah, bugger it, I don't understand what they propose. But then I don't understand the laws from which the ELVs vary and, for that matter, not many of the players do, either.

The Laws are perfectly incomprehensible. I once read a book that claimed to make the Laws simple. I didn't understand that, either. It's that sort of game. A game as violent as rugby can't exist without these complexities. Rugby union has its being on the near-edge of murder-ball.

These ELVs have been drawn up with the best intentions, but they ignore that no player plays any game with the best intentions. He plays to win instead. Any player will pick out the weakness of any Law in about ten minutes and then exploit it for all he is worth.

In real life, a citizen keeps the laws without needing to know them terribly well. The spirit of the law is all. We know that most laws are intended to allow us to coexist peacefully with our fellow humans and it is simplicity itself to go along with that.

But for a professional athlete, laws are there to exploit. It is his duty to push the boundaries, to find any loophole and dive straight through it. In life, people and lawmakers are on the same side; in sport, they are diametrically opposed. If sports administrators kept that in mind, they would be more circumspect when mucking about with the laws of a game.

Chelsea loving life

Oh, how cross they all are at Manchester United. Sir Alex Ferguson is cross because the referee gave a penalty - hadn't he heard that United players are allowed to handle the ball in the area? Then the substitutes fell out with Chelsea's groundstaff - hadn't they heard that United players can go where they like? But they are not a bit cross at Chelsea. Michael Ballack and Didier Drogba were a little grumpy with each other, but it was later hugs and kisses. In football, victory sets the world aright.