Only at Wimbledon can motherly sighs greet the efforts of a 6ft 5in racket-wielding leviathan with the finesse of Fred Flintstone. But Justin Gimelstob was not complaining. It was not much fun being clubbed to pieces by Bamm-Bamm on the opposite side of the net.

Gimelstob was up against Andy Roddick, the most explosive player of his age and the main obstacle to a fifth successive title for Roger Federer. In no time Roddick was 5-0 up and the mismatch looked as glaring as the skies above No 1 Court. Hence the sympathy vote from galleries anxious to be warmed on a dank afternoon.

Then a curious thing happened. Gimelstob avoided the bagel, found some range on serve and worked his way into the contest. From then it was almost nip and tuck until Gimelstob revealed himself to be something of a toothless monster. Yet the fact remains that Roddick was not ruthless enough in dispatching him.

The No 3 seed eventually won 6-1, 7-5, 7-6, but it was far from convincing. He had numerous opportunities to avoid the third-set tie-break, courtesy of eight break points at 4-4. All of them went begging. It was not the sort of the performance to keep Federer up at night.

Federer himself was both quicker and cleaner to the kill. Since the matches started simultaneously, it would have pleased Roddick to be in the shower when Federer returned to the locker room. Instead, Roddick’s brow furrowed repeatedly as those break points came and went. There was a blunt edge to his game, and he knew it.

“It felt like that one game took longer than the rest of the match,” he said. “It was a weird match because the best set I played was the toughest one, but I didn’t have a lot to show for the majority of it.” Thank goodness, then, for that atomic service. It shored Roddick up in the second set as Gimelstob established parity. From deuce at 3-4, Roddick served 13 successive points without Gimelstob managing to fashion a single return, taking him to set point, thanks to a break at 5-5. There was no way back for Gimelstob.

No matter. By now Gimelstob had transformed from court pauper to crowd-pleaser with a nice line in diving volleys. So much so that one spectacular effort brought forth a wag. “Come on Boris,” he encouraged. “You want more effort than that?” Gimelstob retorted as he lifted his shirt to study the damage. Where there might have been grass-burn, there was only mud.

Roddick was fully expecting the sideshow from a man he has known since his youth. “I was trying to keep it together and focus,” he said. “He makes that tough sometimes.” The Americans had even struck a series of bets on who would execute the most dives. “I think he won but it was real close,” Roddick added. “A couple of them, he didn’t have to dive.”

Players maintain that the hardest matches to win are those against friends. Even if Roddick’s efforts should be judged in that light, he will doubtless hear some words of wisdom from his coach, Jimmy Connors. In order to maintain his concentration, Roddick avoided eye contact with Gimelstob throughout the match. It was hardly conclusive. In his playing days Connors would disembowel a friend in pursuit of victory. Roddick could do with an infusion of such blood.

Leaving aside Gimelstob’s gift-wrapped offering of the opening set, Roddick found it hard to create opportunities. The sole break in the second set came when Gimelstob followed a double fault by missing a routine volley. And in the concluding tie-break, Gimelstob failed to land a single first serve in five attempts.

Connors himself boasted one of the finest returns of serve in the game. His hand-eye coordination allowed him to strike an early return, but Roddick is reluctant to follow suit. Early on, with Gimelstob’s serve in tatters, Roddick returned from five feet behind the baseline, staying there for the duration.

In moving forward when returning serve 12 months ago, Rafael Nadal advanced to the final. That much is Roddick’s minimum requirement in a year when lush courts and surfaces rendered slippery by damp conditions should play to his strengths. A little more aggression would surely take him a very long way.