Nadal triumphs in the grandest of slam finals

Sometimes, events like the Wimbledon men’s final on Sunday come along to remind us why we watch sports in the first place.

It’s not to speculate about A-Rod and Madonna, predict whether Bret Favre will come out of a short-lived retirement or talk about Manny being Manny.

Sometimes, all those superlatives tossed around so casually to describe a walk-off home run in April or buzzer-beating basket in February don’t do justice to a performance such as the one Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer put on at Centre Court at the All England Club that ended virtually under the cover of darkness with a changing of the guard in the men’s game.

We heard John McEnroe say it is the greatest match he has ever seen; we’ve read accounts that call it an epic battle of historic proportions. And this time, well, it may all be true.

Just take every ounce of drama, excitement, courage and perseverance that Tiger and Rocco brought to that Monday playoff for the U.S. Open golf championship and double it, at the very least. Nadal and Federer were that good in five sets that ended Federer’s hopes of winning a record-breaking sixth consecutive Wimbledon.

In fact, this match reminded us more of those three memorable slugfests between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier than anything we’ve seen or covered in tennis.

Nadal’s five-set victory in the longest Wimbledon final in history takes his rivalry with Federer to another level. That’s because the 22-year-old Spaniard is the first to take "home court" advantage away. While he continues to dominate Federer on clay, he has made a remarkable transition to grass courts, and looked every bit as comfortable on turf as he does on dirt, becoming the first men’s player since Bjorn Borg in 1980 to complete the French and Wimbledon double.

No doubt some of Nadal’s success is because of the changes made to the Wimbledon surface. The grass is thicker and not cut as short as it once was. The tennis balls are softer. And there wasn’t a legitimate serve-and-volleyer lurking anywhere in the draw as when Pete Sampras, Stefan Edberg, Patrick Rafter, Goran Ivanisevic, Boris Becker, Pat Cash and Richard Krajicek, among others, were making life difficult for the backcourt players.

Nonetheless, it has taken Nadal only five weeks to remove the aura of invincibility surrounding Federer, who has already won 12 Grand Slam titles (only two away from equaling Sampras), owned the No. 1 ranking since the week of Feb. 2, 2004, and won 57 titles overall and 82 percent of his matches during his career.

But Nadal made Federer look like a qualifier in the French Open final, and, after winning the first two sets Sunday, appeared to be on his way to another straight set rout. But no one puts together a champion’s résumé like Federer’s and vacates the throne without a fight. Assisted, in part, by Nadal’s tentativeness (a nice way of saying choking) at 3-3 in the third set and 5-2 in the fourth-set tiebreaker, the Swiss Mister came within a Federer Express serve here, a ripping forehand winner there, of a comeback for the Wimbledon ages.

When he was an active player, McEnroe used to say that rivalries were about making adjustments when one player or the other reeled off a few victories in a row. Federer, who turns 27 in early August, may have reached that point now against Nadal, who is the Energizer Bunny on the court and, as he ultimately demonstrated Sunday, as mentally tough as anyone in the sport.

With any luck, their rivalry will resume on the hardcourts of the U.S. Open late this summer. That’s when we’ll learn whether Roger Federer has made that adjustment or is perhaps facing the autumn of his career.