Neither Switzerland nor Scotland is the natural home of the exquisite. They’re not the kind of places you look for sunflower-clutching, Wildean aesthetes. Harry Lime said that the nearest the Swiss got to high art was the cuckoo clock. He didn’t say anything about the Scottish and tartan, so maybe we’d better let that thought go. Just settle for the fact that neither Scotland nor Switzerland is an art-for-art’s-sake sort of place.

And yet there is an aspect to Roger Federer, of Switzerland, and to Andy Murray, of Scotland, that is rather exquisite. They are both tennis players in whom the artist is always present, a figure that occasionally gets the better of the match-winning machine each strives to be, as it did for Murray against Andy Roddick yesterday.

In some senses Federer, the grand-slam king, and Murray, the young pretender, are opposites. Federer loves to look serene, untroubled, at ease with himself; when Murray looks for his best tennis he puts on his warrior face and roars. Federer is relaxed and at ease in the limelight, Murray is edgy. Federer will talk and talk, with Murray it’s hard to draw a word beyond the throat-clearing bagpipe noise he makes before most public utterances.

And, of course, there is a another difference: Federer has 14 grand-slam titles and Murray has none. But, despite all this, and despite this last continent-wide division, there is much that links them, and it is all to do with the feel of the ball on the racket. Each loves a tennis ball, in the way that George Best loved a football.

You could see Federer exulting in the joy of it as he dismantled Tommy Haas in the first men’s semi-final yesterday. And we have seen the same thing throughout the past fortnight with Murray.

Jimmy Connors used to say that he hated tennis balls and every time one came near him he wanted to hit it so hard that it would never come back. Roddick often looks the same way, and the way he served yesterday it was difficult to see how the ball was going to come back anyway. But Federer and Murray love to do wonderful things with a tennis ball: both will return a ball to the ballboy with a gratuitous spin or fizz or fade, just for the pleasure of doing it, and for the added delight of wrong-footing the ballboy.

As Federer got on top in his semi-final, so the glorious stroke-making became increasingly elaborate. And as Murray battled against Roddick, so he sought to bemuse his opponent with craft, by counter-punching, by building points a little in the manner that a snooker player builds a break, creating a web of shots with devilish spin, ingenious disguise, impossible slice.

There is a danger in all of this, especially against a man in the form Roddick showed yesterday. Great shot-making is not necessarily the same as winning. Sometimes with Murray the artist inside gets the upper hand and starts going for shots just for the love of it, starts trying the impossible for the simple beauty of it, insists on going the pretty way just because he can.

You find this most obviously with the drop shot. The drop shot is a special pleasure to both Federer and Murray because it makes the opponent look so silly. It is a victory for art against brute power, a victory for touch over biff. And there are times when both players play it when an easier option is available, preferring the pretty shot to the point.

This temptation to self-indulgence is one thing the players have in common; it is also one thing that both players work against with every sporting corpuscle in their bodies. Perhaps this is because they do not come from lands where exquisiteness is much admired, but each works hard to subdue that side of their natures.

Art for point’s sake, that’s the idea — and glorious it is when it works. There was one extraordinary shot in Murray’s first set when he was off-balance but hit a cross-court winner with a kind of ping-pong shot full of spin and touch and perfect placement, another moment when he saved a break point with a subtle lob.

I have been watching Federer and Murray closely and I have seen things done with a tennis ball that you would not think possible. We are accustomed to Federer’s magic, we are now learning about Murray.

Murray plays that dour Scot thing with elan, but now I know it’s all a sham. It’s just a technique to keep the rampant artist inside him under some kind of control.