All is right at Wimbledon when Serena and Roger are doing their thing

Grass is always greener when Serena and Roger take Centre Court

WIMBLEDON – There was a fine and predictable magic to all of this in the late afternoon, another afternoon at the 2018 Wimbledon when Serena Williams and Roger Federer were sharing Centre Court, the way they did the other day. Federer played first on Wednesday, then came Serena. They reversed the order Friday. So now it was Serena, a little past five o’clock, trying to play her way to the second week, trying to find her old form, as she tries to be as old a champion here as Federer.

Serena had raised her game at the end of the first set against Kristina Mladenovic, suddenly and loudly, finding length on her groundstrokes, pinning Mladenovic back on the baseline and forcing her into one error after another just by the sheer force of her game, running the last four games of the set from 3-5 down, reminding everybody in the place just how she won all those titles in singles and doubles before she became a mom.

It seemed she would roll from there, but then she played a bad, loose service game when she had a chance to go ahead 3-0 in the second and turn the thing into a beatdown. And reminded you here that while she is back, she is not nearly all the way back. So Mladenovic, who could have beaten a lot of top players on this day, just not the one she was playing, the one with 23 majors, hit herself back into the second set and finally they were into a second set tiebreaker.

And here Serena played the way she has played here across all the years, shouting as she hit more big shots off the ground and more big serves, so loud that she made you wonder if her older sister, Venus, who had lost 8-6 in the third set on Court No. 1 about this same time, could hear her, and hear the sound from inside Centre Court that meant something was happening. Serena, mostly.

If she was an opening to Federer on this day, at the most famous tennis court in this world, she was still something to see. She began with a service winner and then Mladenovic missed a drop shot. Then it was all happening fast, a huge forehand service return, making as much noise on Centre as Serena did when she hit it.

Finally it was 5-2 for Serena Williams, the match on her racket. She served an ace out wide, kicking up chalk, getting herself to match point. Then she shouted again and hit another serve out wide and the ball kicked up more chalk and she was into the fourth round, into the second week.

So she had held up her end of things on Centre, on another day at Wimbledon when she and Federer brought their 15 Wimbledon singles titles in here; their 43 singles majors. In a place where history is as important as it is at Yankee Stadium, no two players, on the same day, have brought this much history with them.

In the interview room, Serena was asked about the fight she showed in the first set after being down a service break.

“I just feel like, okay, I have nothing to lose at this point,” she said. “I want to try harder. I think to myself, Is this the best that I can do? Can I do more? Lot of things go through my brain. Sometimes other things go through my brain. So yeah, I just keep going.”

She keeps going. She is back in play in a major, 20 years after she won her first major, at the United States Open. She pulled out of the French Open because of an injury. But looks healthy enough at Wimbledon. And when she was asked to play on Friday, at the end of both sets, she did.

“I’m trying to find that groove,” she said.

It is the great drama at this Wimbledon, seeing if she can win an eighth Wimbledon singles after the birth of her first child. She served well enough when she had to. She moved well again. And hit one forehand early in the second set which seemed to have Aaron Judge’s exit velo. She won. And then turned Centre Court over to Roger Federer, trying to follow her head into the second week of Wimbledon.

Wimbledon looks easier right now for Federer than it does for Serena, tennis looks easier, even though they are almost exactly the same age.

Federer turns 37 in August, Serena in September. The only woman older than that to win Wimbledon did it 110 years ago. When Federer won last year, he was the oldest men's champion of the Open era, and the next oldest to him was Arthur Ashe, who was 31 when he won Wimbledon in 1975.

In the tennis capital of old, they looked young again late Friday afternoon. Federer was up against a big, strong young guy named Jan-Lennard Struff. And there was this moment early, sixth game of the first set, when Federer hit his own shout of a forehand winner, one that caught the sideline and the baseline, to get him his first break point. Then he hit a crackling backhand crosscourt for a winner and it was 4-2, and he was on his way to another straight set victory.

Fed, then Serena, on Wednesday. Serena, then Fed, on Friday. The capital of tennis wasn't Centre Court this week. The capital of tennis was them.