The King of Tennis

Until that extraordinary fifth set this afternoon’s contest between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick had only occasionally flirted with greatness. It was always tense and often gripping but that owed as much to the weight of the occasion and the serendipity of tennis’s scoring system as it did to the drama of the tennis itself. The fact that, in tennis, you are never more than two points away from a potentially game-changing moment ensured that even matches dominated by seemingly-impregnable serves retain their interest. The tension is provided by the potential of what might happen after the next point.

That’s especially true of matches like today’s final in which opportunities to break serve are rarer than British men appearing in the second week of the championships. (Andy Murray, mind you, should not be too disheartened: there’s no shame in losing to a man playing the best tennis of his career.) And so as that remarkable final set unfolded one was dumbfounded by the quality of serving and, consequently, ever more keenly aware that a single lapse would determine the outcome of the contest.