Federer - Nadal Rivalry : As good as Sport gets.

HOW good was the Wimbledon final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer? Judging from the chorus of praise I have read in newspapers around the world, I reckon it was so good, it has refreshed the meaning of sport.These are heavy thoughts and the point about the Wimbledon final was that it was amazingly light. In fact, by the end, you hardly thought at all.
You were somehow included in the drama. The power of the game came from the two archetypes on display — the fiercely physical younger player and the graceful older champion. It's certainly a pity Nadal's fellow Spaniard, Pablo Picasso, didn't live to see him play. He might have painted him as one of his minotaurs, half young man, half young bull. Potent, muscular figures bristling with life.
Then you have Federer. I can't tell you how disappointed I was by his clothing. Someone had given him a "look" — a gold RF moniker on his cheast, white tracksuit trousers, white cardigan with a gold stripe. If I got hold of those responsible, I would have shouted at them: "Don't you understand? This is one of the most naturally stylish men who has ever walked!"
I'm a big fan of tennis. Although, a certain sense of polite society that has its origins in class and means a lot of attention is given to some pretty boring people. But Federer is different. Federer IS class….Pete Sampras had a giant talent and a wizened sporting intelligence to go with it, but he never excited me, never animated me, like Federer has. Sampras never took me to that other place, the one you go to when sport crosses into the other dimension so that you walk away, as I did after seeing Michael Schumacher in the 2003 season, thinking, "Did I really see something that good?" So good it's gone where memories go that never leave you.
You see a lot of sport that's good, some that's not, a bit that's great, and this other tiny fraction that becomes, well, timeless. Federer took us to that place because there was so much we could admire about him — his physical grace, his obvious intelligence. And then there's the story of how he achieved mastery of the game through achieving mastery of self — that, as a kid, his on-court moods dominated his play. Federer felt every ball, was sad and upset when he lost. Then a close friend died and he found out what real sadness was and, after that, playing the game was a case of, well, playing the game.
I couldn't get over Bjorn Borg sitting in the front row, watching. Here was the last man, like Federer, to win five Wimbledon titles in a row. He sat there, like a ghost in a sporting drama written by William Shakespeare. The Swede's life after tennis has skidded around like a Volvo on an icy motorway. In sporting terms, Borg would have known how much the final mattered. In life terms, I suspect, he knew how much it didn't. Late in the fifth set, Bjorn lent across and shared a joke with the attractive young woman beside him. I would give a lot to know what that joke was.
After nearly five hours of tennis, a mere five points separated Nadal and Federer (209 to 204). There was not a single coarse or angry moment in the game. The dialogues of the two players were internal.
At the news conference after the match, Federer was the least graceful I had seen him. The fact is he didn't hide his sense of loss. But that was fine….It was the new champion who took the game to its final level. Almost in the manner of a younger brother, Nadal seemed to feel as deeply for Federer in his moment of defeat as he did for himself in victory. On the court, Nadal had burnt with a fierce heat. Now, in his moment of triumph, he showed an extreme humility that somehow took in the whole occasion.
What is the meaning of sport? Three hundred and fifty years before the birth of Christ, the Greek philosopher Aristotle said the meaning of sport was that it caused people to engage in contemplation, which he regarded as the highest of human activities.
I find it compelling that so many people from different countries and cultures have felt the need to declare the 2008 Wimbledon men's final to be as good as sport gets.