Monday 8th July 2013

Just imagine if he’d not won! So precarious. We were rocking at the cliff edge right to the very end. If he’d lost that last service game, had to go on to break again and hold serve again… it doesn’t bear thinking about.

It seemed to me Djokovic was on top throughout despite the score, making Murray run around at will in the rallies, never letting him near the net. Although perhaps it was a defensive scheme, because Murray can return almost everything.

Why is tennis the greatest game? I mean the singles. Doubles is glorious, but quite a different thing.  In singles, the solitary soul is so gruellingly exposed on the Court. No other sport so violently sears. And then the unendingness; no time limit. On you go until the end, no let-up, no escape. But the greatest genius was whoever invented the scoring system. Tennis would be nothing without it. Victory, or defeat, can depend on one break of serve and that can be achieved, from deuce, by winning a mere two points in succession. Those points might be won in any manner of ways, after one stroke or twenty-five.

Poor Little Rich Gays, here and throughout the world, are all Wimbledon Champions in their way. No normal steady life for us. Tormented and riven, we forge on and on. Our strokes are sublime; at the side of the court, we stamp and rave and mutter to ourselves. No lounging in a lounger, not a moment’s peace, the glory always past but yet to come.