For a 5th straight year, Roger Federer has vanquished all challengers at Wimbledon and now stands tied with the sublime Swede Bjorn Borg for the most consecutive Wimbledon titles. Unlike prior years though, Federer was finally pushed to a 5th set in the final, again against Rafael Nadal (his opponent in last year’s final and the last two French Finals). But after becoming a bit unnerved in the 4th set over the Hawkeye technology and some uncharacteristic mistakes, Federer harnessed his focus and supreme shot-making ability for the fifth set, breaking Nadal for the first time since the 2nd game of the match after twice climbing out of 15-40 holes at 1-1and 2-2. Both players repeatedly came up with amazing, memorable shots, and the overall high quality of the match stood in stark contrast to the French Open final where Federer failed to play to his level. Federer now has 11 grand slam titles, tying him with Borg and Rod Laver at 3rd all time, behind only Roy Emerson (12) and Pete Sampras (14).

Speaking of Borg, no other tennis career has more ‘what ifs’ than his. Despite the fact that he only played the Australian Open once (as an 18 year old in 1974), was 0-4 in US Open finals, and retired totally healthy at only 26 years old, he still managed to gather more slams than all but one player, Emerson, at the time of his retirement. It’s not inconceivable to imagine him with 18-20 slams – retirement at 30, play the Aussie Open every year, win just half of those US Open finals…but alas, we’ll never know. Because of all these factors, I will put Borg and Federer atop the all-time greats list – Laver & Sampras just a notch below, in that order.

Back to Wimbledon, there were some notable emergences during the often wet fortnight. Richard Gasquet finally made a Grand Slam quarterfinal and made the most of it after spotting Andy Roddick a 2 set lead and then storming back to win the match in 5, eventually losing to Federer in the semi’s. His countryman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, ranked 212 at the start of 2007, lost to Gasquet in the 4th round and is now 74th in the world. Janko Tipsarevic solidified himself as a top 30 talent after making the 4th round, too, after making the 3rd round of the French this year. Young studs Tomas Berdych (quarterfinals) and Novak Djokovic (semi’s) also solidified their stature in the game, while veteran Juan Carlos Ferrero’s quarterfinal appearance showed he is still a formidable opponent on most any surface.

Looking ahead, this week it’s back to the European clay in Sweden, at Bastad, and Switzerland, at Gstaad. A third tournament, on U.S. soil, is being played on grass at Newport Rhode Island.