Rain Is For Roger (excerpt)

Is tennis supposed to be this sad?

In what is already being called the greatest match of all-time, Rafael Nadal derailed Roger Federer’s dream of winning, consecutively, six Wimbledons and his 13th grand slam. After a five-set, almost five-hour, thrice-rain-delayed contest that went down in the record books as the longest men’s final ever played at Wimbledon, Rafa won.

Why am I sad? Everybody loves Rafa. Wonderful, beautiful, humble Rafa, who beat Roger so badly at the French Open in June in three sets, surprising everyone and still singing Roger’s praises…Rafa, who made his own mark on history by following that victory with one at Wimbledon as one of only two men to do that…Sweet, family guy, unassuming Rafa, who broke Roger three times in the first two sets to go up 2-0 then doggedly fought off a champion who was not going down without a spectacular fight…Rafa, this athletic freak of nature who runs everything down and plays with so much heart on every point that you wonder how he has anything left to turn the blood through that body – he deserved to win.

My husband and I – both fans and players – watched the entire thing on TV, starting at 9:00 am, when the first rain clouds were opening, keeping Roger and Rafa from the courts until an hour later. It ended six and a half hours later, at about 4:30 pm, after two more rain delays drove the players off the courts, and falling night threatened to stop play.

“Rain is for both,” said Rafa simply when asked before the match about how the first delay had affected his preparations. But rain might have been for Roger, at least for a while. It could be argued that it kept him in the match. After Rafa took the first two sets 6-4, 6-4, it was beginning to look like a possible repeat of the rout at the French. But Roger came back in the third, winning his first set in a tie-breaker after the second rain delay. In the end, the gathering night, the final set, the crowd crazed on the highest amount and level of tennis possible, the crown of the most prestigious championship in tennis – it was all for Rafa. And the rain was all that was left for Roger.

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