The king’s sheen of invincibility has begun to slip away

Roger Federer has a way of making things look inevitable. When he lifts a title, he usually does it so serenely and artistically that you cannot imagine any other outcome. And Federer has been lifting a lot of slam titles lately! Three in the last six, to be precise. So it felt like a significant disturbance of the space-time continuum when he lost to Kevin Anderson yesterday.

Messages started arriving from friends and family members who have barely noticed the first eight days of this tournament.

A couple of people might even have taken their eye off the World Cup build-up – if only for a moment.

The statistics – 85 straight service holds, 34 straight sets – gave Federer a sheen of invincibility as he stepped on court yesterday. His millions of admirers should also have taken heart from a sequence of results – final, final, semi-final, champion – that had seen him waltz past the second Wednesday in each of the past four years, twirling his cane and waving his top hat in the air.

But life comes at you fast, as the kids say. And it comes especially fast on a grass court, as Federer knows all too well. “One point can change the outcome of a set,” he had said on Monday, in a quote that could be taken as the epitaph of his Wimbledon.

Yesterday, one point changed the outcome of this whole match, and perhaps even this whole Wimbledon Championships. It came 1hr 55min into this 4hr 14min epic encounter.

Anderson found himself match point down in the 10th game of the third set, but as he came to the net behind a big serve and forehand, Federer framed his backhand passing shot outside the tramlines. “I had my chances and blew them,” he said later.

Federer’s other problem is that he is not in the sort of position we remember from the dream final of 2008, which he began on a five-year unbeaten run at Wimbledon.

He won here so convincingly last summer that it felt like he was setting out on another dynastic domination.

But this was a bit of a conjuring trick. While Federer is arguably playing better than he did in his pomp, the rest of the world has caught up, too.

Every sport improves: that is just the nature of competition. But tennis’s golden generation are not done just yet. As Anderson inched his way to his famous victory, Rafael Nadal was fighting out an absolute humdinger with Juan Martin del Potro on Centre Court, the arena Federer in which might have expected to play yesterday.

Thus it is that the Spaniard still has a chance of closing the grand-slam gap – which currently stands 20-17 in Federer’s favour

– to just two majors.

The king of Wimbledon might have gone, but there is everything still to play for.

“Now it is a reality that Federer is not here,” said the ever-gracious Nadal last night. “He lost. That’s part of our sport. I’m sorry for him, of course. But it is impossible to win always, even for him.”