Wimbledon '09

Roger Federer won a record 15th Grand Slam after beating Andy Roddick in an epic fifth set 5-7 7-6 7-6 3-6 16-14. (bbc.co.uk)

I followed thru almost every game, one with Frederer in particular. So with it over and out, from Monday onwards, I can now get back to my usual slumber routine at 10.30pm.

But before that, apart from Star Sports Channel, it was great following the event coverage thru Twitter @wimbledon. The guys at the end of the keyboard, or keypad, whatever, have done a stupendous job keeping the tweets interesting & fulfilling. The picture feeds were great. The RTs (retweets) from Serena, fans, whoevers, were like SMSes from friends.

For a game like tennis, where watching full-match replays is psychotic & suicidal, its great to get uplifting news, quotes & feeds via Twitter.

To Roddick & Frederer, it was a great 5-match finals. In the end, Frederer is da man. Even at the declining age of 28, he has again shown the world why he is such a living legend.

A world record of 15 Slam titles.

And still serving.

Darth Federer

The Roddick-Federer game was just mind-boggling. There was Roddick; obviously on juiced-up steroids, serving at Mach 5 and putting his best performance ever. And there was ice-cold Federer; dressed all black aka Darth Federer, soaking the pressure with ease and simple changed gear to close the game. I remember telling myself at that moment; “this is just unreal”. And finally, I found an article (URL below) that unfolds the flabbergastation: Federer is not human.

Read it here (http://tennisworld.typepad.com/tennisworld)

Four current top 10 players -- Fernando Gonzalez, James Blake, Tommy Robredo and Nikolay Davydenko (Federer's semifinal opponent) -- are a combined 0-34 against Federer.

Wednesday, Roddick tried landing 71% of his first serves for the match and a remarkable 81% in the second set. He tried committing zero double faults and just 24 unforced errors over three sets. He tried holding serve and avoiding even a single break point through the first two sets. He tried taking good, calculated chances at the net and hitting as crisp and authoritative a backhand as we've seen from him. He even tried wearing black.

Hail, maybe this "Federer" started out as an idea in the mind of some Sega Genesis game designer, but the algorythms just got out of hand and he leaped across the Great Divide like some character out of a Philip K. Dick novel.

Beyond that, do you ever notice that this so-called "Roger Federer" has perfect hair that never seems to get mussed or out-of-place - the dude looks like one of those pictures your local barber has tacked up all around his mirror, hoping you'll be hoodwinked into dropping an extra Jackson on the full "I want to look like I'm in a boy band!" look.