Forget that asterisk on Roger Federer's 15th Grand Slam triumph.
Even Rafael Nadal couldn't have topped this.
It took the second-ranked Federer -- soon to be No. 1 again -- more than four hours to overtake Roddick.
"It was a crazy match, an unbelievable end," Federer said at the championship ceremony. "My head's still spinning."
The Swiss supplanted Pete Sampras on the all-time major titles list as he sat courtside, on hand for the first time since he last played at Wimbledon seven years ago.
I don't really like recaps, but there are a couple of good live blogs that are a pretty interesting read, since they were written in real-time. I watched the game on NBC - it was a remarkable game; imo, while the score flattered it somewhat (the score was 5-7, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5), 3-6, 16-14, but I've seen much better games, including last year's final), it was still excellent and, beyond that, very very tense. Both players were totally involved, throwing themselves into - really impressive match.
Roddick played very well; by the end of it, you felt really bad for him, because he had clearly given it all that he had. Federer didn't play was well as he sometimes plays, and for much of the match Roddick was clearly the superior player, but it was an excellent match up until the end. I can see the merits of the keep-going-in-the-fifth-set system they have at Wimbledon - it made the match much more tense, since both players required a break to win.
Both players put on a serving clinic. Roddick was broken only once in the match in his lots-of service games and Federer had 50 aces (50?!?!). It was almost more enjoyable to watch from the perspective of the person trying to break, because it was really frustrating for either player when they would win a point on the other's serve and the other player would proceed to hit an ace or two, or a serve that was difficult to return well; this was true for both Roddick and Federer.
Very good game! Federer finally has fifteen Grand Slams and a very legitimate claim as "best player in tennis history". I'm not sure if he deserves that, but he's certainly up there (in my book he's first, but I think there are legitimate arguments for other players who had more success on other surfaces).
Did anyone else see the match? What did everyone else think?
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