Will Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal serve up another Wimbledon epic?

Well played: Roger Federer congratulates Rafael Nadal at the end of the 2008 final
AFP/Getty Images

Echoes of 2008 will reverberate around Wimbledon on Friday, when Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal step out on Centre Court for a repeat of what many regard as the greatest tennis match of all time.

With the pair older and wiser, the contest will be less punitive — Nadal’s body unable to cope with his sustained slugging from the back of the court and his game having adapted accordingly.

But for John McEnroe, it is a straight throwback to an era when the Spaniard was the young pretender and Federer invincible on grass.

“It’s still the best match I ever saw, the drama, the tension, it had it all,” he said. “That we get another chance to do it again, you feel lucky. It’s just a privilege to watch these guys.”

Before the first rain break came, an unthinkable straight-sets win for Nadal was brewing, having won the opening two 6-4, 6-4. In the locker room in the weather breather in the days before a roof, Federer told himself: “If you’re going out of this match, at least go down slinging”.

Over the course of two tie-breaks, he did just that, saving two championship points in the fourth set when Nadal recalled being “filled with the euphoric sensation that victory was mine” but that sensation nullified as the contest went to a notoriously epic fifth set, which ebbed and flowed.

When the rain came down again in the fifth, Andrew Castle stepped out of the BBC commentary booth with Tim Henman. “It was Tim’s first final and I looked at him and said the only mistake we can make is to talk too much,” he said. “I didn’t think I could add to what we were watching so the words were very fleeting.

“It’s odd as looking back, I can’t remember the individual points like other matches, more the sense that we were watching a dance rather than a tennis contest but it was a dance in which they were beating each other’s brains out. It was one of those slow-motion moments in life.”

When the players returned to the match at 7-7, darkness enveloped the cauldron of Centre Court.

Umpire Pascal Maria, who struggled to get to sleep until 5am the following morning as the match he had officiated replayed in his head, said: “Hawk-Eye went off because of the darkness. We agreed we would have to stop the match at 8-8 but the players were so much into it that they did not even realise.”

In Pictures | Wimbledon 2019

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Referee Andrew Jarrett had a decision to make and came close to denying spectators and a gripped TV audience, as the grey skies further threatened.

“I was sitting watching this drama and trying to make sense of all the information we were getting on the forecasts,” he said. “When Nadal broke back at 7-7, there was a heightened sense of anticipation. If Federer had broken back, we probably would have come back the next day.”

Both men had their chances to finish off the contest — a remarkable statistic of the match is that Federer converted just one of 13 break points on the Nadal serve — but in the end it was the Spaniard who edged the contest 9-7. Victorious, he looked physically and mentally exhausted while, bizarrely, Federer still looked fresh.

That year Novak Djokovic suffered a second-round exit and his coach Marian Vajda was watching the final on TV back at home in Slovakia. Vajda described the action as “strawberries and cream” tennis and admitted before either semi-final of this year’s event that he and Pepe Vendrell, the coach of Roberto Bautista Agut, were understandably hoping for a repeat of the marathon, which ended after four-and-three-quarter hours of tennis.

Champion: Nadal lost successive Wimbledon finals to Federer before beating him in 2008 
AFP/Getty Images

“That’s what we wish for,” he said. “I don’t think it will be like this. That time was more about fighting but now it’s more about quality. I don’t think it will be long rallies but it’s going to be a lot of qualify shots.”

So high is the sense of anticipation that there is always the danger of a letdown but, with echoes of 2008 still resonating, the prospect of a repeat is mouthwatering.

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