Wimbledon in 2016 can be seen as the tale of two early-round matches: Serena Williams held off an upset bid from Christina McHale in three sets in the second round; Novak Djokovic couldn’t do the same against Sam Querrey in the third round. From there, the two draws flowed in opposite directions. The men’s went to new places, and the women’s went back to a familiar one. The tournament began in frustration, with nearly 20 rain delays over the course of the first week, but it ended in satisfaction, with two champions—in Serena and Andy Murray—who gave their troubled countries a few moments of sporting catharsis over the weekend.

Here’s a look back at the winning performances, the heroic ones and a few of those that left something to be desired.

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Serena Williams

After three unsuccessful attempts at her 22nd major, Serena found the formula: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the very, very good. In the second round, she smashed a racquet and sent it spinning into a photographer’s lap. After that close call, though, Serena played the calmest and most calculated tennis I’ve seen from her in a year. In three of her last four matches, her opponents made inroads against her, but she just went about her business: i.e., coming up with bomb serves when she needed them. With Serena, it’s the inner battle that matters more than the outer one; knowing you should win every match doesn’t make it any easier to actually do it. Once again, at a time when some of us wondered if she had lost her edge in that battle, Serena found it again. “I know, mentally, no one can break me,” she said after beating McHale. Then she proved it. A+

Andy Murray

Roger Federer had his Fernando Gonzalez final; Djokovic had one against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga; Rafael Nadal won his first major over Mariano Puerta: It’s about time that Murray, after facing either Federer or Djokovic in his first 10 Grand Slam finals, had a chance to face a rookie. Finally we got to see a showcase for Murray’s game alone, without anyone else from the Big Four there to overshadow him. He made the most of it. His fast feet, his quick hands, his uncanny returns, his solid serve, his all-around subtlety and versatility, and his underappreciated cool under pressure: Murray proved himself a champion in his own right. He said his coach, Ivan Lendl, helped, but this win wasn’t about the “Lendl effect." Coming into the tournament, he had beaten his final four opponents—Nick Kyrgios, Tsonga, Tomas Berdych and Milos Raonic—in 24 of their last 25 meetings combined. This win was about Murray’s consistent excellence finally getting its just reward. “I feel like my best tennis is ahead of me,” he said afterward. Murray is 29, but you can understand why he feels that way. A+

Milos Raonic

His lack of consistency from the ground, and especially on the return, was thoroughly exposed by Murray, but his loss in the final wasn’t a surprise or a serious disappointment. The Raonic “brand,” as one reporter put it at Wimbledon, is about methodical, step-by-step progress. Everything he does on a tennis court, with the possible exception of his serve, looks learned rather than natural. Over the years, he has had to learn to run faster, make more returns and close out points at the net. In his first Grand Slam semi, Raonic lost in straight sets; in his second, he lost in five sets; in his third, against Federer on Friday, he broke through. Now, when it comes to Slam finals, the process may have started all over again. A major title isn’t guaranteed for the 25-year-old—he’ll likely always have exploitable weaknesses—but his effort to make it happen is. A

All-England Appraisal

All-England Appraisal

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Angelique Kerber

Angelique Kerber, big-stage player? The opposite has been the case in recent years, but it’s hard to draw any other conclusions from her 2016 so far. Kerber won the Aussie Open, lost in the first round in five of her next nine events, and then reached the Wimbledon final. All struggles seemed to be forgotten this fortnight: She played with confidence, and spoke with even more of it. “My game” is to be “aggressive,” the counter-punching Kerber said several times, and she succeeded in making herself believe it. But she couldn’t quite convince herself she could beat Serena on Centre Court; a flurry of rushed shots and errors doomed her at the end of each set. Still, the No. 2 ranking next to her name doesn’t look strange or surprising anymore. A

Venus Williams

It was a magical run for the 36-year-old crowd favorite. She reached her first Wimbledon semi in seven years, won her first Slam title in doubles with her sister in four and delighted fans around the world with her seemingly infinite optimism and love for her sport. While the memory of what she did on the court may fade, the memory of what she said off of it won’t. Venus was a one-woman inspirational quote machine over these two weeks. “I don’t have time for easy,” she said. Words to work, play and live by. A

Marcus Willis

For three days, the 772nd-ranked Willis was the Cinderella-in-shorts story that England and its rain-soaked tennis tournament needed. His tale of wasted potential and “bad decisions,” as he put it—overeating being at the top of the list—was something many of us could identify with. It was fun to see a normal human across the net from one of the beyond-normal people—in this case, Federer—that we typically see on Centre Court. Once he was there, Willis entertained us with a thoughtful slice-and-dice game. Will we remember him a year from now? We should. A-

Roger Federer

Federer has won two five-set Wimbledon finals, and lost two in his career. You might say the second week of this year’s event was his All England career in microcosm: He survived a classic fourth-set tiebreaker against Marin Cilic, then served himself out of one against Raonic. Federer was coming off an injury, but the way he was broken at 5-6 in the semis reminded me of the way he was broken at the end of the fifth set in the 2014 final against Djokovic. He seemed, suddenly and surprisingly, to run out of belief. We’ve seen Federer do that against top-tier players like Djokovic before, but rarely, if ever, against a player of Raonic’s lesser stature. Still, at 34, Federer gave us as much drama and entertainment as anyone else in the draw. When he walked off Centre Court, he turned around to wave a bittersweet goodbye; he said it wasn't goodbye for good, just a thank you for the “feeling” the crowds there had given him over the two weeks. As he has for more than a decade, Federer gave them that feeling right back. B+

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Sam Querrey

The unassuming, 28-year-old Californian shook up the world and made his first Grand Slam quarterfinal. In doing so, he led a surprising U.S. charge into the second week. On Manic Monday, six of 16 fourth-round matches involved a player from the States. Querrey also reminded us that, when’s he’s playing well, he’s an easy guy to root for. B+

Dominika Cibulkova

On Manic Monday, she and Agnieszka Radwanska met on No. 3 Court, the infamous Graveyard, and nearly sent each other there. Their three-set, three-hour epic was the match of the women’s tournament. It also included the clip of the tournament: Cilbulkova’s fiancé standing outside the court in the third set, literally banging his head against a wall. But it all worked out in the end: He was back in his seat to see Domi finally beat Aga, and when she lost in the next round, they could go get married. B+

Lucas Pouille

His quarterfinal run, which included wins over Juan Martin del Potro and Bernard Tomic, should put this 22-year-old Frenchman on the Next Generation radar screen. B+

Juan Martin del Potro

He made the tennis world smile with his win over Stan Wawrinka. Then he told his next opponent, Pouille, to shut up. I guess Delpo’s honeymoon period is over; things get nastier when you start winning matches. B

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Nick Kyrgios

He helped give us one of the gems of the tournament, a five-set showcase of showmanship against Dustin Brown. Then he was criticized, rightly, for his casually negative body language in his straight-set loss to Murray. Kyrgios makes the tough shots look easy, and the spectacular look second nature, but his demise against Murray began when he missed a regulation forehand volley at the end of the first set. That, as much as his body language, is a place to make improvements. B-

Novak Djokovic

He hinted at an injury after his third-round loss to Querrey, but no matter what the state of his health was, a letdown was inevitable. That match lasted for two days, but it still wasn’t enough time for Djokovic to find his usual competitive fire. In retrospect, a loss shouldn’t have been a surprise. After winning the Indian Wells-Miami double on hard courts, Djokovic struggled to make the immediate transition to clay in Monte Carlo. The transition from clay to grass was always going to be equally difficult, if not more so, considering that he had just achieved a lifelong goal of winning the French Open three weeks earlier. In 2014 and 2015, Djokovic bounced back from final-round losses in Paris to win at Wimbledon, but there’s a reason why the Channel Slam is so rare. Last year Serena won her fourth straight major and then lost; this year it was Djokovic’s turn. C+

Garbiñe Muguruza

Too often you can tell from the first few games how Muguruza is going to play an entire match. The French Open champ was down 0-3 in eight minutes to Jana Cepelova, a player ranked outside the Top 100; after 59 minutes, she was out of the tournament. The No. 2 seed said she learned that you always need to be fully prepared for every Slam. You also needs to fight, even when, after three games, you're not in a fighting mood. C-