Centre Court in awe as Roger rules
● Federer wins record eighth Wimbledon title as injured Cilic struggles to keep up in mismatch
And the new Doctor Who is … Roger Federer. And the new Prime Minister of Britain is … Roger Federer. And the man selected to lead the first mission to Mars is … Roger Federer. And – wait – there’s been a recount: the winner of Love Island is … Roger Federer!
Maybe there will be even more glory ahead for Federer, more honours to be claimed, but right now he’s content with being the king of Wimbledon. Yesterday the great Swiss became the first man to win eight singles titles, gliding past the marks set by Pete Sampras in 2000 and William Renshaw more than a century before.
In the end it was a bit of a rout. Marin Cilic winkled one break-point from the history-maker in the fourth game and then never again. How distant that moment seemed as the imperishable Federer – who never lost a set all tournament – then toyed with the Croat, whose cause wasn’t helped by a foot injury.
At the end, as Federer’s children perched on the lip of his box looking for all the world like they were sat on a park bench having just watched their old man win a Sunday afternoon knockabout with his neighbour, there was sympathy for his opponent from the Centre Court crowd who had hoped to see their idol forced into more tight spots, requiring more flashing forehands and bravura backhands. But by 6-3, 6-1, 6-4 in 1 hour 41 minutes Federer had triumphed, surely confirming his position as the all-time greatest to go with his long-held title of most-beautiful, and that was the main thing.
Is there nothing the man cannot do? Not in the eyes of this audience, it seems. You wonder how many of them have read all the books hymning Federer, for there are many. The sub-headings seem to be trying to outdo each other: Biography of a Genius … Portrait of an Artist … Quest for Perfection … Story of an Obsession. The top seed among Fed-scribes is the late American writer David Foster Wallace, who penned Federer as Religious Experience. The English writer Julian Barnes has extolled the player’s virtues thus: “A lack of all that strutting male bullshit, a preternatural calmness … grunt-free, seemingly sweat-free.”
Well, Federer wasn’t always calm in his semi-final against Tomas Berdych. That spot of self-reprimanding in Swiss-german, spat out with a surly expression, was a collector’s item. Berdych hit flat and hard cross-court to Federer’s forehand and had some success, but still ended up beaten.
What could Cilic do? His coach Johan Bjorkman had spoken of the work done on his client’s body language, making him more aggressive and “really feeling like he’s two metres tall”. As the No 7 seed walked on to Centre Court you wondered why he didn’t already believe this. But then he was entering Federer’s Love Island where passion is unbound and hunky Rog from Basel usually wins. “Centre Court is his couch,” Bjorkman said. Or his bed.
But when the crowd squealed their delight as Federer fired down the line for his first attempted winner, it was a case of premature exultation. The ball wasn’t quite dead, Cilic retrieved it and won the point. That must have given him hope, as must getting to break-point in Federer’s second service game. But the Mighty Fed held and immediately broke himself, thanks in part to a delightful rally settled with a volley in full flight. The reaction of Theresa May in the Royal Box was to hold up her hands in astonishment in a “Where did my majority just go?” kind of way.
Though we didn’t know it – but could probably sense it – that would be as good as the 50th final of the Open Era would get for Cilic. He would claim just two more points on his rival’s serve in a sequence that would take Federer to a two-set lead in a minute over an hour.
The two-metre Cilic shrunk fast in that first set and even further in the second. He didn’t have the range of shots of Federer but then few do. He was always going to have to play the match of his life, topping his performance in beating Federer on the way to his only Slam, 2014’s US Open – and that didn’t look like it was going to happen.
He seemed hopelessly out of sorts when Federer broke him at the start of the second set. With his head covered in a towel the trainer was called and we wondered if this could turn out to be the shortest men’s final Wimbledon has seen in modern times. In the end it ran on a bit longer than John Mcenroe’s 80-minute demolition of Jimmy Connors in 1984.
When Cilic – who made almost three times as many unforced errors – resumed he was given a sympathetic
- ness of the match’s opening phase. By overcooking his shots it seemed the most pressing dimensions issue was his need for a slightly bigger court. Federer took this set with an ace.
There was more treatment for Cilic before the third set and more encouragement for him in the hope he could rally. He managed to win three service games in a row and even got to deuce when Federer was serving but the love god was never in any real danger. At 3-3 a slap into the net from Cilic gave Federer two break points. Another from almost the same place put him within touching distance of a trophy of which he knows every shiny contour.
In the movie classic The Third Man, the eight-times champ’s homeland was denigrated by Orson Welles. “In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Well, they’ve also given us Roger Federer.