Wimbledon 2009: Roger Federer defeats Andy Roddick to win men's singles title

This was the day when Andy Roddick’s serve was broken just the once, in the 77th game of a 77-game Wimbledon men’s final. That one break of Roddick’s delivery, after more than four and a quarter hours of play on Centre Court, was all that Roger Federer needed to take the fifth set 16-14, to become the first man to win 15 grand slams, and to regain the world No 1 ranking.

“Roger is a legend, an icon and a stud,” said Pete Sampras, who had flown in from California to sit in the front row of the Royal Box to see his 14 slams being superseded.

It would seem that winning the men’s Wimbledon singles final in straight sets, or in anything approaching a straightforward manner, has gone out of tennis fashion.

Federer’s 5-7, 7-6, 7-6, 3-6, 16-14 victory meant that, going on the number of games that had been played on Centre Court, this was the longest Wimbledon final of all time, plus the longest final played at any of the four majors, and the 30-game fifth set was the longest played in a title-match at the majors.

Just a year ago we had the longest Wimbledon men’s final, if you measure a match with the clock, as Rafael Nadal required 4hr 48min to beat Federer 9-7 in the fifth set, when the stadium was so dark that the umpire should have provided night-vision goggles.

This was half an hour shorter than last year’s final, and last summer’s Nadal-Federer match remains at the top of the leaderboard of greatest finals contested on these lawns. Though Federer started slowly on Sunday, he won a sixth Wimbledon trophy, putting him just one short of Sampras’s record seven titles – something to aim for next summer.

Roddick turned in one of the sharpest performances of his tennis life, and yet when he returned to the locker room he had pink-tinged eyes, and he was holding the silver runner-up’s plate, and not the champion’s golden, pineapple-shaped trophy.

This was the third time that Roddick had lost a Wimbledon final, after defeats to Federer in 2004 and 2005, but this was the most difficult for the American to accept. “Tennis is cruel,” said Federer, who was in Roddick’s position last summer; emotionally battered. Now Federer is the happiest that tennis has seen him. This month, he and his wife Mirka will become parents for the first time.

If Federer had not broken Roddick in the 30th game of the fifth set, they might have ended up playing through the night and into this morning.

The fifth set was extraordinary. Serving at 8-8, Federer found himself at 15-40, but he produced a couple of big serves to get back to deuce, and he held.

When Roddick came out to serve at 14-15, it was the 11th time that he had got up off his chair to serve to stay in the match. Roddick had won his previous 37 service games. A forehand error from Roddick’s racket brought up match point for Federer.

Another forehand mistake from Roddick, and the match was over. Federer had served 50 aces in the match, just one fewer than Ivo Karlovic’s Wimbledon record.

Federer’s reaction to victory was to leap into the air. Roddick’s reaction, after an embrace with Federer at the net, was to fling his racket on to the grass, and to then sit down on his changeover chair, and to put his head in his hands as he waited for the prize-giving ceremony. Meanwhile, Federer put on a white tracksuit with a golden “15” embroidered on the back.

It was not just the closeness of the fifth set that would have been so upsetting for the American, it was also the fact that he had held four points in the second-set tie-break to go two sets up, and on the fourth of those, when he had most of the court to play with, he could not keep his backhand volley inside the lines.

Sampras had jumped on a plane to watch Federer, a close friend. It was the American’s first visit to Wimbledon since he lost early in the 2002 Championships to a Swiss sub-journeyman player, George Bastl. This was not about Federer confirming his place as the greatest player to have picked up a racket and swished it at a tennis ball, as he had already done that by winning his first French Open last month. This was about the accumulation of grand slam titles, about Federer becoming the most successful player in history.

There were two very different tennis players out there on the grass. Federer walked out to play in a white-and-gold outfit of jacket, trousers and man-bag. If Sacha Baron Cohen’s camp Austrian fashionista, Bruno, was into tennis, he would not dress that differently to how Federer did.

Federer peeled off the jacket and trousers, and showed that he is a smooth and sophisticated presence on court.

Roddick emerged wearing his baseball cap, and then started banging down his serves. Roddick led 6-2 in that second-set tie-break, so holding four set points, only to then lose six points in a row. Many other players would have faded away. Roddick did not.

Roddick’s performance was a fine one; people have played tennis of a much lower quality and won Wimbledon’s Challenge Cup.