| Tuesday, 1 July 2008 Written by Ron Atkin It is men's quarter-finals day, and Braveheart rides again! The home fans have had a day to recover their breath after that unforgettable, bicep-flexing Monday evening on Centre Court when Andy Murray put Richard Gasquet to the claymore. Now it is time for the last Briton standing in the singles to step into the Centre Court ring with Rafael Nadal, the muscled Majorcan who treats tennis like boxing: left cross, right uppercut, knockout. Murray is brimming with confidence, even though he is tackling a man who has been runner-up here for the past two years. And you feel that the 21-year-old Scot is not whistling into the wind when he talks up his chances against the Spaniard.
Here is someone who feels his particular brand of web-spinning could ensnare the pugilistic Nadal, as it did an increasingly bewildered Gasquet on Monday. Murray's play brings to mind Arthur Ashe's unforgettable description in the late 1970s of John McEnroe, then a new arrival on the men's tour. "He inflicts a nick here, a cut there and pretty soon you've bled to death."
Whether Nadal will be weakened by Murray's nicks and cuts enough to be brought down is debatable. The Spaniard is the one player you would confidently expect to run through a brick wall and still be prepared to serve for the set.
The two have met three times and it is 3-0 to Nadal. But their closest match was their previous Grand Slam clash — in the Australian Open fourth round in January — when Nadal had to come back from two-sets-to-one down to win in five.
Fighting back is what Nadal does so well, and so consistently. Which is why he is unbeaten on clay and doing so well on grass these days. And, with his nation's footballers winning Euro 2008 last weekend, Nadal will be keen to make it a double for Spain.
But a word of warning, Rafa. Watch out for the combination of spider's web and claymore. There is an extra incentive for the winner, in the shape of a semi-final against an unseeded opponent.
The fact that Americans Andy Roddick and James Blake were dispatched early in the tournament has left the way clear for Arnaud Clement, a Frenchman best known for the prettiness of his floral headbands, and Rainer Schuettler of Germany, whose biggest achievements came five years ago when he lost to Andre Agassi in the final of the Australian Open.
With Clement, aged 30, and Schuettler, at 32, the oldest men left standing in the singles, this might be dubbed the Zimmer frame match.
Schuettler does not even make it into this year's edition of the ATP guide to men's tennis and his season to date has been sprinkled with appearances on the lower rung of the game, the Challenger tour.
Clement, meanwhile, is at 145, the lowest ranked man to get this far at Wimbledon since Germany's Alexander Popp reached the quarters in 2003 with a ranking of 198. He will still be pinching himself to think he has lasted longer than anyone else from his country, even Gasquet. Which just goes to show how far a nice headband will sometimes take you.
Staying with the sartorial theme, Roger Federer and his lovely cardigan are still travelling club class towards Sunday's culmination of the Championships, but the next stop — first match on Centre Court — involves a name, and a statistic, from the past.
In the first round of the 2002 Wimbledon, Roger, then without cardigan, lost to Mario Ancic, a lanky young lad from Croatia. Nobody has beaten him here since.
Ancic long ago became fed up talking abut this achievement, pointing out that Federer has beaten him five times since, including at this stage two years ago.
Federer admitted the other day: "I completely underestimated him in 2002. I expected him to stay back and the opposite happened."
There is no chance that the champion will again underestimate the man affectionately known here as Super Mario. The Croatian has seen off three seeds to get this far and came out on the right side of a 13-11 five-setter against Fernando Verdasco in the previous round.
No need to ask whether he is now fully recovered from the glandular fever that laid him low for much of last year. The man who watched Wimbledon 2007 from his sick bed now has a chance to become a hero in Croatia.
Finally, let's hear it for Marat Safin, my own hero of the men's tour for many years. How wonderful to see this double Grand Slam champion back in the big time, and to find he has run out of things to complain about on the subject of grass-court tennis.
It would be no more than Safin deserves to see him reviving those magic memories, but he needs to beware his opponent, Feliciano Lopez.
The left-handed Feli, who is sharing a house near the Wimbledon courts with his best mate Nadal, has had Safin's measure in the past, winning four of their five meetings, including at Wimbledon in 2005.
Is there no end to the Spanish run of success on the tennis courts as well as the football field? Or can Safin come up with some of that old-time magic?
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