The whiny, batty, beautiful finalists.

The Finals

And so it came to pass—to the surprise of no one, to the delight of all lovers of masterly tennis, to the grudging admiration of those who would hope that a superlative athlete might display more charisma than a microwave oven—that Roger Federer won the Wimbledon title by beating Rafael Nadal in a very fine five-set final. With this achievement, Federer matched Björn Borg's record of five consecutive men's titles. There was Borg, up in the stands, in from Sweden to bear serene witness and extend his blessings. He looked rather like Ed Begley Jr. with Peter Horton's hair.

Below, on the green and tan of much-punished Centre Court, Federer did manage a few moments of recognizable human emotion. Nadal had made handsome use of appealing the line judges' calls to the Hawk-Eye—the ball-spotting technology newly in use on the All England Club's two main courts—and, by the fourth set, it had driven R-Fed bonkers.

He wondered aloud to the chair umpire if they couldn't just, you know, turn it off: "It's killing me today," he said, wincing. Whining has rarely seemed so appealing. He was boyishly aggrieved. NBC had been heavily rotating a Nike commercial, narrated by Tiger Woods, that swept through Federer's life in 60 seconds and lingered tantalizingly on some adolescent moments of hearty racket abuse, and now we saw a flicker of that fire. It was coolly hot, and not even petulance, really. It was more like one of those mental spasms that passes when you're playing poker or hearts and, having scrutinized your lousy cards and failed to imagine a good way to play them, you catch yourself trying to change them with your mind—just trying to will the four into being a queen, the spade into a club.

Meanwhile, Nadal sneered like a toreador and snarled like a bull and fidgeted with his shorts, something of an elegant lug. One really wants to see him in the movies—as a baby-faced gangster in over his head in an Almodóvar noir, maybe, or just playing himself in a piece modeled on an Andy Warhol screen test, reading an American monologue in his charmingly awkward English: When the final was over and the hardware doled out, Rafa warmly congratulated Roger on his "teetle."

It's much more difficult and far less enticing to imagine any future that Federer might have in film, but he'd be a natural at dance. His hustle is gorgeousness, and his every pivot a fragment of a pirouette. When, at the moment of taking the championship point, he went down on his knees, it was not the theatrical reverie of a media star, but an honest and unconsidered collapse, full of heart and fluid as beauty.

As for Venus Williams' title, a host of records attended it. She had been seeded 23^rd, so she became the lowest-seeded woman to earn the championship in the history of Wimbledon. The All England Club has finally dragged itself into modernity, so she became the first women's champion to earn a purse as large as the men's. This was Venus' fourth title, so she joined Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, and Steffi Graf at that summit. She persisted in wearing very short shorts, so she became the tournament's first victor in hot pants.

Also, she won by defeating France's Marion Bartoli—the most charmingly batty finalist in recent memory. Bartoli had beaten the charmlessly batty Justine Henin in the semifinals, a feat she attributed to the presence of a former double-0 agent in the Royal Box. "I saw Pierce Brosnan in the crowd, which is one of my favorite actors," Bartoli said later. "I said to myself, 'It's not possible I play so bad in front of him!' " Not stopping, she continued, "I was focusing on Pierce Brosnan because he is so beautiful." We imagine that, after cashing her finalist's check for 350,000 pounds, she'll be scouting eBay for Remington Steele lunch boxes.

Thursday, June 28

The simplest way to find the full text of the Clive James poem "Bring Me the Sweat of Gabriela Sabatini" is to visit the Web archive of The Sports Factor. Do click it open and taste of the emotions evoked by the Argentinian attacker with the supple backhand. For further reading, see an old Martin Amis piece titled "Tennis: The Women's Game":