WIMBLEDON, ENGLAND — As a deathless fifth set bloated to 6-6 and to 10-10 and to an inconceivable 14-14, as it elongated to 95 minutes and left the corner scoreboard chockablock with numerals, this latest masterpiece of a Wimbledon final seemed to heave with the audacious aim of rivaling its hallowed predecessor.
Whether it succeeded in the end would prove debatable, but nobody at Centre Court on a sunny, blustery Sunday at the All England Club will lament having witnessed a men's singles final so commendable that the fans wound up chanting the name of the man who did not win.
"Roddick! Roddick! Roddick!" they roared, because Roger Federer's 5-7, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5), 3-6, 16-14 nudge past Andy Roddick in the longest Grand Slam final by games had become the second straight Wimbledon final in which neither player deserved defeat, as well as an implausible case of somebody not winning despite holding serve in his first -- really, now -- 37 tries.
Crestfallen in his chair, his face aimed at the ground as their chant swelled, the 26-year-old native Nebraskan who'd lurked sorrowfully near his childhood daydream stood up, turned around and clapped for an audience that returned the standing ovation.
"Sorry, Pete," Roddick would say moments later toward Pete Sampras in the front row of the Royal Box while holding his third and least appropriate Wimbledon runner-up plate. "I tried to hold him off."
Did he. With an upgraded calm essential for not crumpling into a sobbing heap after a lurid second-set tiebreaker, Roddick almost thwarted Federer's sixth Wimbledon title and his eclipsing of Sampras with a record 15th Grand Slam title. A player even tennis freaks had all but disregarded in recent years -- and whose second-round ouster last year marked his worst Wimbledon -- collaborated with Federer at least to approach the soaring 2008 final of Rafael-Nadal-over-Federer-by-9-7-in-the-fifth.
"I lost," Roddick summarized inaccurately.
Indeed, when the 4-hour 18-minute, serve-and-return bout of staccato points had ended, Federer uttered seven words almost never heard from him in Swiss, German, French or English: "I couldn't control the match at all."
After he somehow withstood what he couldn't control, the first question to a brooding Roddick went: "Did you just lose to the world's greatest tennis player ever?"
Roddick, in a word: "Yes."
