Salute, then, Roger Federer: the man who broke the unbreakable man. There are all kinds of ways of being a champion. The least sexy, and perhaps the hardest, is simply to stand your ground, simply to outlast the other bugger, simply not to fold and never to compromise. Federer didn’t get to win 15 grand-slam titles — more than anyone else has won — just by pretty shot-making.

Oh, one’s heart bleeds for Andy Roddick all right. He played 37 service games in this titanic match without being broken once. He would not be broken, no, not him. Not till the 38th game he served, and then Federer showed that he was that tiniest bit better when it came to outlasting.

The scoreline reads like an epic of suffering, and so it was, as Federer won 5-7, 7-6, 7-6, 3-6, 16-14. That final set became a blur: on and on they toiled, taking turns to slap aces at each other. The match was close, the games within it were not. In that final set, each man, as the four-hour mark ticked past, continued to serve with undiminished venom. Love games were common; deuces were rare; break-points almost non-existent. There were three in the first 29 games of that extraordinary set.

You kept saying, well, someone has to break. And break is a big word — in men’s tennis it is like breaking the man himself. To be broken is to surrender a little of your manhood. So this became an old-fashioned bout of male head-butting, and in this department, until the very last game of the match, Roddick had the edge.

He broke Federer in the first set and again in the fourth. And his own serve was a monstrous, inviolable thing. He hit 143mph at one point: more importantly, he crashed down a winner every time the Swiss sniffed a quarter-chance. Federer needed the tie-breakers to get past him. In a normal service game, he just didn’t have a chance. The fifth set looked like a long one from the very first point because Federer had no breaker to wait for.

Roddick served like a champion, served like he meant to win. But always there was Federer at the other end, never matching Roddick for pace on the serve, but very seldom letting Roddick get close. As the final set rolled on, it was impossible to see a winner, perhaps ever. It looked as if they would still be swapping aces and love games for years to come.

But somebody always does break. You know it, both players know it.

And Federer simply wasn’t prepared for it to be him. And so, in the 30th game of the fifth set — how absurd it feels to write those words — Roddick made a series of small errors, errors that Federer had been waiting for, errors that Federer pounced on without a shred of compassion.

Federer has won Wimbledon before and done so with tennis of beauty and wonder. He has woven a spell, he has entranced, he has created such visions of loveliness that we got all fanciful and called it Art. On Sunday he won by the brilliantly simple tactic of Not Losing. In the second set, he saved four successive set points in the tie-breaker. Had Roddick been two sets to love up, who can say what would have happened.

And in the final set, Federer was mostly outplayed. Roddick was rallying with more aggression, more conviction. But no man would be broken, serve-serve, ace-ace, on and on as the skies grew dark and the sun began to sink.

The end was mercilessly swift. Federer had waited and waited, never buckling. He didn’t beat Roddick, he outlasted him. In the end it was the only ploy that was going to work against a man inspired, against a man who served thunderbolts in the manner of Zeus. Roddick served better, and for much of the match played better, but Federer has another very important weapon in his armoury. He is better at winning championships.

It was a back-to-basics sort of day, a serving duel on a grass court, an eyeballing, antler-crashing battle of the manhoods, an examination of the most basic requirement for winning a championship.

Federer didn’t want it more than Roddick, don’t think that for a second, nobody could have wanted it more than Roddick.

But Federer was better at actually getting it. Federer has won 15 grand-slam tournaments, he won the fifteenth because he is the best at winning.

Serving up a real tweet
Twitter exploded on Sunday night as sportsmen and women opened up their conversations by phone and computer during the epic final (Kevin Eason writes). Laura Robson, Britain’s teenage sensation and last year’s Wimbledon girls’ champion, was all dressed up to go out to see her favourite pop singer. “Going to be late for Lady Gaga because of final,” she told her followers. “Can someone win now, please?”

Lance Armstrong, making his comeback at the Tour de France, was just frustrated. He tweeted: “Unreal. The Wimbledon final is not on here in France. Bummer!” Then: “Wanted my Austin homeboy Roddick to take this one. Aargh!”