Nerves And Volleys

When it was over, Serena celebrated by hanging her head and pinching her nose with her fingers. At the net Venus met her conqueror with a hug and a smile. While workers rushed on court to set up the trophy presentation, Serena left her chair and sat next to Venus; the two chatted like pals on a park bench. It was lovely to see and, to anyone who has ever battled a sibling, instantly understandable.

"It's O.K. with me," Serena says about the unavoidable awkwardness of beating her sister in front of their parents and the rest of the world. "This is my life." Some will never accept such an ambiguous dynamic, but not accepting it is the easy way out. It's harder, but far better, to embrace the weirdness, to accept all the questionable strokes as the revitalized heartbeat of what is both the most boring and the most riveting rivalry in sports. "There's still a lot of drama to come," Serena said.

The men's draw, of course, has nothing nearly as rich to offer, but then chaos and masterly play have their appeal, too. Not only did the ATP kick off the proceedings by threatening boycotts of the next five Grand Slam events in a demand for more prize money, but any hope of on-court continuity vanished when defending champ Lleyton Hewitt lost in the first round and longtime under-achiever Mark Philippoussis dumped world No. 1 Andre Agassi in the fourth round. Suddenly, with all the players with Grand Slam pedigrees wiped from the tournament before the quarterfinals, it became clear that the game had hit a chronological seam, one of those gaps between eras when everything is up for grabs.

Suddenly, the Nearly Men had a chance. They were led by Tim Henman, whose annual quest for Britain's first male Wimbledon crown since 1936 has evolved into an ever more agonizing progression of English hope, fervor and self-loathing. This year the British press skipped right to the self-loathing, asking Henman, 28, about being a "nearly man." Why hadn't he ever won his home Slam? "The bottom line is," he said a week before losing to S�bastien Grosjean in a rain-soaked quarterfinal, "I haven't been good enough."

Neither had Grosjean, Philippoussis or this year's other two semifinalists, Roger Federer and Andy Roddick, both of whom have what is considered limitless potential. The fifth-seeded Roddick wasn't playing mind games when he described the fourth-seeded Federer as "the best player not to win a Grand Slam"—no one in his generation has been more tormented by high expectations than the 21-year-old Swiss. Ever since 2001, when he ended Sampras's 31-match Wimbledon winning streak in the fourth round, the tennis world has waited for Federer to break through.

Against Roddick in the semis, Federer's time came at last. He wasn't the favorite: The 20-year-old Roddick, harnessed by new coach Brad Gilbert, had loped into Friday's match with his serve and his confidence at a supreme level. He had won the Queens tune-up, beating Agassi for the first time, and hadn't lost in more than a month. His backhand had finally become a weapon; bookies picked him to win it all. The day before the semifinal McEnroe, Boris Becker, His Nastase and Martina Navratilova signed an open letter to the president of the International Tennis Federation bemoaning the death of serve-and-volley tennis, labeling today's game "unbalanced and one-dimensional" and calling for reduced racket width. Roddick wasn't mentioned, but he was Exhibit A.

Federer crushed him. In a perfect rejoinder to the small-racket crusaders, Federer handled Roddick 7-6, 6-3, 6-3, demonstrating that even now a player with enough will and genius can bring elegance and touch to a game that had seemingly lost it forever. Against Roddick's clanky baseline attack, Federer flowed effortlessly from defense to offense, absorbing Roddick's massive serve, punishing him from the backcourt and cruising forward to conjure up volley after breathtaking volley. By comparison, Roddick rushing the net resembled a man tumbling down a flight of stairs. "Maybe I can play like that sometime," Roddick said of Federer's game.

He had nothing to be ashamed of. Philippoussis's serve is just as dangerous as Roddick's, but on Sunday, Federer reduced the Australian to irrelevance as well, stroke by exquisite stroke, 7-6, 6-2, 7-6. Federer had never advanced past the quarterfinals in a Grand Slam event before, but the man who showed up at Centre Court on Sunday wasn't the same one who lost in the first round of Wimbledon a year ago. Last August, Federer's first coach, Peter Carter, the man who shaped his technique from the age of eight, died in a car crash in South Africa. His funeral was the first Federer ever attended. After that, Federer said on Friday, "I didn't have any fire anymore." He lost in the fourth round of the Australian Open in January and in the first round at the French Open in May. When he injured his lower back in last week's fourth round against Feliciano Lopez, only the combination of painkillers and a massage kept Federer in the draw.

"I thought I might have to throw in the white towel," he said on Sunday. "But somehow my back got better, my game got better, and here I am standing."

After pounding in his final winning serve and falling to his knees, Federer sat in his chair and wept. "I think of him every day," he said of Carter. "In these big matches, I thank him also inside. It gives me strength somehow." And when, answering questions on court, he tried to thank everyone who had helped him, Federer's voice spiked and he sobbed again: "It's so great!"