The longest match in Wimbledon finals history ends several records
Oh, I’m going to use Nadal’s win for all it is worth.
There is now, finally, an official end to many of the (admittedly amazing) records that Federer was building up. He had 65 grass courts wins straight, 40 of those from Wimbledon. He has 5 previous Wimbledon titles and was looking to break into six to beat out Bjorn Borg’s record 5 straight Wimbledon titles. Federer was looking to also add a Slam title to his collection of 12 to try to break the Sampras record of 14. That record will not fall in 2008.
But much of that is over now - the 4 hour 48 minute match put the first Spaniard in the Wimbledon champion position since 1966 (Manolo Santana, who attended the match today), and the first man to win both Roland Garros and Wimbledon back to back since Bjorn Borg in 1980. Borg was there to watch this match, and had previously predicted that Nadal had the edge in this final. I’ll see if we can dig up any video of Borg’s reaction - he was very calm throughout the match.