Travel Blog

My one Wimbledon post - on how the Lacoste crocodile was starting to challenge the dominance of the Nike swoosh - nearly proved prophetic yesterday as Andy Roddick, in stained and sweaty reptile cap, battled valiantly through 77 games - over 4 hours and 18 minutes - against the Swiss God of Victory.

The match was mostly a battle of serves, and so less enthralling, with less sensational shot-making, than last year's final between Federer and Nadal. What was incredible (though no announcers I heard commented on it) was the fact that Roddick held serve for 37 straight games (this they noted) while Federer had nearly twice as many aces: 50 to 27 (this was noted too, but not in connection with the first statistic). Federer, typically, often got his racket on the serve, but, atypically, could do little with it once he did.

I felt sorry for Roddick after the kind of superb performance he usually saves for the post-match press conference. He is probably the most amusing and least predictable player in tennis. (Note the echos of Lou Gehrig in his courtside interview.) Though the euphoria of a win yesterday may have found him grasping for cliches.

But I was happy to see Federer finally break the record of Pete Sampras, a great player who often bored me to tears with unreturnable serve after unreturnable serve. (There's something about a Federer ace that makes it less like a brutal silencer and more like a work of art that leaves you speechless.) For a few years now watching Federer has been a bit like watching Sisyphus; it is such hard work making your way through a Grand Slam, and he has done it with such grace and consistency - this Wimbledon marked his 21st straight Grand Slam semi-final - only to be pushed back, as he got inches from the summit, by Rafael Nadal. Some people think his last two triumphs - at the French Open and now at Wimbledon - are less valid because he didn't have to play Nadal. What they fail to mention is that almost every time they met, Federer had two opponents: Nadal and history. I can't wait to watch him now, when he will see only the Spaniard on the other side of the net.