Roger Federer made history at long last. It sure didn't look like it was going to happen along the road this year, but he dug deep and got it done against his favorite whipping post, Andy Roddick. Of course it wouldn't have been so epic had Roddick not put up a good fight, but in the end, the man of destiny beat it out to the promised land.
Federer's 5-7 7-6 (8-6) 7-6 (7-5) 3-6 16-14 victory in four hours and 18 minutes came 12 months after he had suffered a heartbreaking defeat here in another epic five-set battle with Rafael Nadal.
This time, however, with a collection of the game's all-time greats looking over his shoulder from the royal box anticipating the Swiss would win the unprecedented 15th major title, Federer finally endured, breaking Roddick's serve for the only time in the match on the American's 38th service game to seize victory.
Clearly exhausted by his toil, and perhaps stunned by the opposition he had been forced to endure from an opponent over whom he had held a 18-2 career record, the often emotional Federer was more relieved than elated as he received the Wimbledon trophy for the sixth time.
"It's a crazy match, my head is still spinning," Federer told the crowd.
Pete Sampras, who had flown in for the match at the last minute to see Federer move ahead of him on the all-time grand slam winners list, paid the Swiss the ultimate accolade saying he considered him the greatest player of all time.
"I have to give it to him," said Sampras. "The critics say Laver, and Nadal's beaten him a few times ... in my book he is."
The man is a great player and nobody is going to quibble with him being called the greatest until somebody comes along and wins more. Roddick had these interesting words at the end:
Roddick said Federer had, for the first time, been unable to read his serve.
"But you didn't even get a sense that he was even really frustrated by it," said Roddick.
"He kind of stayed the course and just toughed it out. He gets a lot of credit for a lot of things, but not a lot of the time is how many matches he kind of digs deep and toughs out. He doesn't get a lot of credit for that because it looks easy to him a lot of the times. But he definitely stuck in there today."
If you go 2-19 against the best player of all time, how disappointed can you be at:
- a) winning twice?
- b) getting to play the man 21 times?
- c) your surname has 2 euphemisms for 'penis' while the greatest player has none?
Roddick's a cool dude.
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