It was somehow entirely appropriate that Roger Federer should withdraw from the mud and the wet and the chaos of the accursed Wimbledon, that he should leave fastidiously in his white jacket and his long trousers and leave the struggling, the rain-dodging and the sordid details of tennis to lesser folk.

Appropriate, but as Sergeant Wilson would ask: was this quite wise?

Federer took temporary leave of the tournament with a kind of Olympian detachment: departing as if to a magic mountain, a personal Swiss alp from which he could look down on the world with a mixture of sardonic amusement and lofty pity.

He was last on court the previous Friday, when he played some sublime tennis to defeat Marat Safin in straight sets. Then his fourth-round opponent, Tommy Haas, pulled out, gone in the fetlock, and so Federer retreated to his fastness, actually a safehouse in SW19. This was considered to be the most colossal advantage: to the man who had it all, just a little bit more. That he should have the luck as well as everything else seemed really a bit much.

Meanwhile, Rafael Nadal, his principal rival here and everywhere else, has hardly been off court. Every time it has not actually been raining, there is Rafa out on court working his shorts off in an atavistic fury.

One match lasted five days and five sets and the day after – yesterday – he played his next match. It lasted but a single day, but still required five sets: another day, another epic.

And all the while, Federer has been coming out of his house when it has been dry enough, hitting a few balls and biding his time, like Achilles. For everyone else, an unending two-week slog; for Federer, a few days, a week’s holiday with the prospect of arriving daisy-fresh into the three matches that would take him to his fifth successive title here.

So out he came at last, looking mildly surprised to find us all still here. We all look a bit battered after the events of the past week and a half: all save Rog. He hung up his jacket on his chair, warmed up, removed his long trousers, and then proceeded into battle against Juan Carlos Ferrero, seeded No 20.

And there came a moment when you wondered if having a holiday in the middle of a grand-slam tournament was such a good idea after all. Could Federer be in danger of outcooling himself?

He came out in a bubble of brilliance. He reminded me of the young girls in Bali who perform intricate movement in an altered state of consciousness: trance-dancers who complete their gorgeous routine only to pass out, apparently unaware of what they have done. Federer trance-danced his way through the first eight games, instantly going a break up, instantly reaching a level of perfection that was almost unbearable to watch, yet impossible to look away from.

And then he blinked. Perhaps it was too easy. Perhaps he woke from his trance. Perhaps he simply lost concentration; and losing concentration in grass-court tennis is a disastrous thing to do. In the space of about 90 seconds, Federer was broken to love. He completed the game with an air of frank bewilderment. Ferrero then held his own serve and the rain came at 5-5 and deuce in the first set.

This is not the sort of thing that happens with Federer and it looked like a simple case of ring-rustiness. A grand-slam tournament is a series of increments: each match slightly harder than the next, each task slightly more demanding, slightly more rewarding, until, by graduated stages, you are playing for eternal glory in the final. To miss out on even one of those stages might be regarded as a misfortune. You might go into a big match undercooked, without the kind of hardness you can get only by playing for keeps.

The rain dug deep and sent Federer back to regroup and to meditate on such things as trance state, having a bit of a holiday in the middle of a tournament and having a bit of a holiday in the middle of a set of grass-court tennis. Federer was a man ever so slightly out of kilter with tennis reality yesterday.

It didn’t look like a terminal disaster, more like a man falling up his own staircase. But too much of the soft life isn’t good for you: you lose your taste for going into uncomfortable places. Meditating on such matters, Federer prepared for his return to combat; ever so slightly chastened, ever so slightly embarrassed. And, I suspect, ever so slightly determined to set things right. To remind us all that it’s not the jacket and the trousers that set him apart from lesser tennis folk.