| Thursday, 3 July 2008 Written by Ronald Atkin Will the men's singles final end up as predictable as the women's? With the Williamses in possession of their first-class boarding cards for Saturday on Centre Court, it is now up to Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal to confirm, if confirmation were necessary, that they are the world's best two male tennis players.
Or, perhaps more accurately, it is up to maverick Marat Safin and Germany's Rainer Schuettler, at 32 the oldest of the semi-finalists, to overturn what would be a very large apple cart. It is mightily difficult to see anything other than a Federer-Nadal clash on the ultimate day of the tournament, and it would be a final with so many fascinating aspects. Can Federer win a sixth straight title? Will Nadal, the Rocky Marciano of the fuzzy ball game, sock it to the Swiss?
But first, Safin and Schuettler are necessarily permitted their own tilt at fame in Friday’s semi-finals. And fame is a state to which Safin, especially, is no stranger, having two Grand Slam statuettes to show for it on his trophy shelf at home in Moscow.
How he wishes the shelf could also contain the dangling scalp of Federer. He has, of course, defeated the world number one, but only twice in 10 encounters, and the only one of those 10 that he will remember with a smile is the semi-final of the 2005 Australian Open. Safin scraped through 9-7 in the fifth set and went on to win the whole thing. It was a second Slam to go with his 2000 US Open, that unforgettable straight-sets humiliation of Pete Sampras that lifted him to the summit of the rankings. Talking of the 2005 Australian, that was the last time Safin won five successive matches until now.
Clearly, then, Marat has suddenly found form. He has lost his way a little of late and came into Wimbledon bearing a ranking of 75 and lingering resentment about playing on grass. Little has been heard of that latter complaint over the past dozen days as Safin staged a personal re-run of All Our Yesterdays by eliminating four seeds, including the third favourite Novak Djokovic.
By getting this far, Safin is guaranteed a place back in the world's top 40, and an upset over Federer would elevate him to among the leading 25.
It is Safin's first Wimbledon semi-final in his ninth appearance, and by getting this far he has brushed away a few cobwebs in the Russian record books. Not many tennis followers will remember the last Russian man to light up Wimbledon: Alex Metreveli, Georgian-born and operating under the flag of the Soviet Union, was runner-up in 1973.
Even so, that is better than Switzerland had managed until Federer parked his tank on the lawns of the All England Club. No man from the land of the Alps had ever done much here previously, but how Roger has made up for that.
In going for his sixth straight title, he has dusted off another heap of cobwebs and old bones. Nobody has won six straight Wimbledons since William Renshaw in 1886, and Renshaw was only required by the weird regulations of those days to turn up for the following year's final rather than make it through the preceding rounds.
Federer’s record is well documented, though the mathematicians among us may be a little surprised to learn that, if he wins the title again, he will equal Bjorn Borg's record of 41 consecutive victories at Wimbledon. But Borg lost the 1981 final, so shouldn't that be 42? No, because Federer received a walkover en route to the 2007 title, when Tommy Haas tore a stomach muscle, and walkovers are not counted as part of a streak. So there.
Nadal comes into the other semi-final on a 23-match winning streak, on both clay and grass, and is aiming for his third consecutive Wimbledon final. How the young man from Majorca would love to add a Wimbledon championship to the four he has amassed at Roland Garros.
First there is the immediate task of subjecting Schuettler to his pugilistic approach. Nadal leads their personal head-to-head series by three wins to one, Schuettler's victory having come four years ago against an 18-year-old Nadal. Ranked at 94, Schuettler is Wimbledon's lowest-rated semi-finalist since Goran Ivanisevic, a wild card and 125th in the world, went on so memorably to lift the title in 2001. But, of course, this particular fortnight, Schuettler's finest since reaching the final of the Australian Open in 2003, will lift him comfortably back inside the top 50.
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