Peerless pair put Borg and McEnroe heroics in the shade

For Roger Federer, there can be no consolation. Maybe one day he will watch the DVD and reflect that in none of the dozen Grand Slam finals he won was he half so great as in this one that he lost. Times beyond counting he faced defeat, and plucked salvation from nowhere like the impossibly elegant magician he is.

"Incredible," murmured Tim Henman as yet another clean ace saved his bacon deep into that indescribably thrilling final set, and this was statement of fact rather than pundit's hyperbole. It didn't so much beggar belief as kick belief in the cobblers that, after four-and-a-half hours during which the metaphorical sound of his fingernails scraping the cliff face echoed around Centre Court, he retained the nerveless strength to keep himself from falling into the void.

I grievously underestimated him. Convinced that the scars of the mauling he suffered in Paris last month hadn't healed, and that the wounds inflicted by Rafael Nadal that pulverising afternoon would be reopened, I had put my money on a straight-sets defeat. And so it might have been had the first bout of rain stayed away ten minutes longer.

That first shower gave the Fed a chance to regroup just when when he looked resigned to defeat, and he returned with a rediscovered sense of purpose. When he took the fourth set tie-break to square the match at 2-2 you were convinced that Nadal's deathbed mutterings would concern the regulation forehand he failed to put away on championship point.

Even though that sublime tie-break was a truncated version of the legendary-Bjorn Borg/John McEnroe marathon of 1980, who believed that Nadal could replicate Borg by recovering from the loss of championship points to win the title? Nadal believed it if no one else, and one reason his achievement dwarfed Borg's was that he faced the colossal disadvantage of serving second in the final set.

Yet like Goran Ivanisevic in his epic 2001 defeat of Pat Rafter, but without the same torrent of aces at his disposal, Nadal and his diamond-encrusted tungsten-core thrice held serve before breaking, holding for the title, and then takingto the Royal Box roof.

What made this match so peerless was how it gloriously captured the essence of the two next unforgettable Wimbledon finals alluded to above.

It melded the shot-making magnificence of 1980's Borg vs McEnroe with the raw, visceral excitement of Ivanisevic v Rafter. What made it simply the finest sport I've ever witnessed is that it involved arguably the two finest exponents of their game at inarguably the pinnacle of their powers.

Where defeat leaves Federer is uncertain. In everything but the computer rankings, he is clearly now the world's second-best player, and soon enough the rankings will catch up with that egobruising reality.

The Fed has never performed more flawlessly than yesterday, and with luck will yet overhaul Pete Sampras's Grand Slam record of 14, but that's no longer the foregone conclusion it once was.

Where victory leaves Nadal is easier to guess. It leaves him well on the road to stripping Federer of the acronym GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) which many have given him. The solitary barrier between the adorable Spaniard and the setting of records that may never be approached, let alone broken, is the body he exposes to such remorseless punishment. His mind, spirit and appetite will never weaken.

It was a real privilege to watch this game of tennis, and if mild poignancy sets in at the realisation that this was as good as it will ever get, that is a tiny price to pay for a sporting spectacle more perfectly extraordinary and more extraordinarily perfect than we had any right to expect.