20 for 20: No. 6, Federer d. Nadal, 2007 Wimbledon

Last year, for the 50th anniversary of TENNIS Magazine, we focused on the past. Given the tome of stories we’d told, and the trove of players and matches we’d witnessed over the past half-century, it was only natural to look back.

And it was comical to even consider doing something similar this year, for the 20th anniversary of TENNIS.com. So we’re taking the opposite approach, and instead focusing on the future. All throughout the week, we’ll be talking about what’s next for the sport, the website and much more.

It wouldn’t be an anniversary, though, without a countdown. But how do you count down events that haven’t yet happened? By predicting what will come to be.

With that said, we present TENNIS.com’s 20 for 20: Twenty matches that we’ll still be talking about twenty years from now. We’ve restricted this list to matches that have taken place in the last 10 years—or, as 20 for 20 author Steve Tignor has put it, “The Golden Decade.” (If you haven’t read our 50th Anniversary Moments or Tournament of Champions, also written by Steve, I implore you to do so.)

It has been a bountiful time for tennis since TENNIS.com’s inception, and it’s anyone’s guess what the next 20 years will bring. But we believe that each of these matches will sustain the test of time.—Ed McGrogan, Senior Editor

If ever a match has been unduly overshadowed, it’s the 2007 Wimbledon men’s final. When it was over, I thought it was the highest-quality match that had ever been played—until I saw Nadal and Federer play on the same court a year later.

Still, in this case, second best is still pretty amazing. In some ways, this match represented both the peak of their rivalry, and the peak of Federer’s reign over the tennis world. In 2006, Rafa and Roger split the French Open and Wimbledon finals, and in 2008, Nadal tilted the balance in his direction when he beat Federer in both of them. But in ’07, while Nadal was closing in on his throne, Federer remained the king. This match gave him his fifth straight Wimbledon title, but it was also the first time during that 35-match stretch that he had been pushed to five sets.

The level of play was high to start, and it only grew higher over the course of its three hours and 45 minutes. Never had so much offensive power been matched with so much defensive speed on both sides of the net—Nadal even hit a winner from a sitting position at the baseline. The sun that splashed Centre Court throughout the match only added to a sense of magical rightness around6 the afternoon.

Federer jumped out to a 3-0 lead on the strength of seven winners. Nadal, who was still discovering how good he could be on grass, answered with a series of brilliant passes to break back. While Federer snuck through the first set in a tiebreaker, Nadal returned the favor with a late break in the second. It was Federer’s turn to raise his game in the third and power through another tiebreaker, but Nadal saved his best tennis of the tournament for the fourth, which he won going away, even while injuring his leg. Federer, meanwhile, felt injured by the Hawk-Eye replay. After a close call went against him, he asked that the system be turned off and told the chair umpire the computer was “killing him.”

In the fifth, it looked briefly as if Nadal’s run of brilliant form would take him all the way to the title. With a rattled Federer serving at 1-1 and 2-2, Nadal went up 15-40 both times, but he couldn’t find a way to break. Finally, with Rafa unable to take it, Roger did. He surged through the final four games and finished his most satisfying win at Wimbledon to that point with a forehand volley winner.

Had Nadal reached his limit on grass? He feared so. Afterward, he said he “cried incessantly for half an hour in the dressing room, tears of disappointment and recrimination.”

In truth, though, the 21-year-old Spaniard had only begun to come into his own on the surface. Perhaps only his opponent that day had an inkling of what was to come.

“I’m happy with every one I get,” Federer said of his win over Nadal, “before he takes them all.”

In the six matches these two have played at the Grand Slam since that day, Nadal is 6-0.