The best and the brightest.

The wimbledon final,finaaal to be precise, has thrown up a new deserving champion Rafael Nadal.Few moments come in our life, that we can confidently recall to our grandchildren as historic.This should be right up there.It showed us what tenacity can do, when you don't have abundant talent with you.It also showed us Great champions are not mass produced, but finely crafted with an extra special gear.True the match went on for 4 hours and 48 min, not even once allowing our mind to think about the impending dinner.Almost every audience there would have got the feeling they are infact seated round a boxing ring, not a theatre.

But,are we writing obituries for Federer too early..............

Every sporting champion has got a defining moment. Muhammad Ali standing up to a fierce pounding by Joe Frazier in Manila; Michael Jordan, sick and weak and shooting out the lights in the playoffs; Pete Sampras vomiting on court, legs rubbery, still winning in the 1996 U.S. open;Dravid fighting cramps and self-demons at Eden Gardens;Lance Armstrong conquering cancer in his hospital room and for Roger Federer it is on 6th of July.This moment would be the catalyst he is searching for the past few months.

Not many can come back from 0-2 down, especially against a guy who doesn't know fear and with history heavily weighing you down.Federer was simultaneously fighting Nadal on the court and Bjorn Borg off the court.Furthermore his forehand and backhand had lost their precise calibration for the past year and the half. But the only friend of him, that gave him company all through the match was his potent serve.Whenever he was in trouble he summoned it and it obeyed like a dutiful servant.In all he hit 25 aces, 89 winners.Yet the scoreboard read 4-6,4-6,7-6,7-6,7-9.He would be disappointed for sure but Federer would understand that the better guy on that day won.What remains memorable even after 60 hours is Federer saving the second championship point of the match in the fourth set with a backhand winner inches of the baseline that would have made the builder of B-52 bomber going green with envy, for the shot's accuracy.

Pete Sampras in the 1995 Australian open was a remarkable story in never underestimating people playing at this level.In the quarters, he was 2 sets down and staring at the barrel against Jim Courier.Before the start of the match his longtime friend and coach, Gullikson, had collapsed in the locker room suffering from brain tumor and rushed to hospital.When he was a break point down and unable to focus, in the third set, a fan called out,"come on pete,do it for your coach".Sampras started crying and served out an ace to close the break point.He won that match and he subsequently lost to Agassi in the finals.Anyway he won that elusive cup in 1997..After losing the 1996 Wimbledon, Sampras came back and won it for four continuous years, 1997-2000.
As Muhammad Ali famously said"Champions are not made in gyms.They are made of something else.You need both will and skill to win, but the will is more important than the skill".Of course Federer knows that and the humble man had already made a statement, "...please judge me after the U.S. open".Federer would come back strong knowing that he has got quite a few mouths to shut and should i tell you that we will have a lot more July 6ths if Nadal can show the same improvement he has shown.