Swiss genius blazes brightest as elements ruin fine day

Not even the Centre Court ground staff, leaping into action with their tarpaulin as the rain began to fall for the umpteenth time, covered the venerable grass as impressively as Roger Federer. The champion played superbly yesterday, gliding around the court like the puck in one of those amusement arcade air-hockey games, although not banging into the sides as much.

It is possible that Federer will not go on to retain his title, but it does not seem terribly likely. Remember that Sébastien Grosjean, the 10th seed, had not lost a set in this tournament before being demolished in the first two sets 6-2, 6-3. In truth, it was not quite a demolition; the Frenchman is too fine a player to succumb to one of those. But a single break point at two-all in the third set was the nearest he came to asserting some authority. And he lost it. The match will resume today with Federer 4-3 ahead in the third set, which has gone with serve.

Federer has the game, and even the headband, to dominate Wimbledon like Bjorn Borg did nearly - heaven help us - three decades ago. In fact, the Swiss is reminiscent of the Swede in several respects, not least the way he has curbed a hot temper to become, as Nick Bollettieri wrote here yesterday, the coolest of cats.

If anything stands in the way of such dominance, it is his own body. On the BBC's Today at Wimbledon programme the other evening, Andrew Castle made the interesting point that the 22-year-old's right wrist simply might not stand up to the strain of repeatedly whipping his groundstrokes as powerfully as he does. When I learnt to play tennis, at a somewhat less exalted level, I was taught that the wrist was for the squash player. Tell that to Federer.

And take your pick of languages; the man speaks quite a few. Thank heavens it is Quentin Tarantino he looks like, and not Brad Pitt. Otherwise we chaps might start getting jealous.

In the meantime, to pick out a single weapon from his remarkable artillery is an invidious task, but the one that stands apart is his backhand. A single-handed backhand is a rare and beautiful thing in top-level tennis these days, and one wonders whether Federer's, hit with more whip than any mount of Tony McCoy's ever was, will encourage more youngsters to give it a whirl.

Jack Nicklaus used to say that when he was playing against Gary Player in the dapper South African's heyday, he would walk over the crest of a hill to see Player's ball on the green, and think "Thank God he's not in the bunker". Player was a magician with a putter, but a sorcerer with a sand wedge. Grosjean yesterday might have thought the same as he batted the ball across the net towards the Federer forehand, not that there was much time to think before it whistled back towards him. Or more frequently, away from him.

Grosjean himself is a player of consummate artistry. He stands only 5ft 8ins, which makes him the Danny DeVito of professional men's tennis (or perhaps the Mickey Rooney, since Olivier Rochus from Belgium is only 5ft 5ins), yet compensates for his lack of height with a game of deftness and agility in which he has only one peer. Unfortunately for him, that was the guy on the other side of the net. Grosjean looked like the brilliant Marseille pickpocket who went to Basel and had his pocket picked.

At the start of the match, Federer stood 29th in the service-speed list at this year's Wimbledon, with a personal best of 130mph. This put him level with Britain's own Lee Childs, and behind such household names, if only in their own households, as Olivier Patience and Robin Soderling.

Service-speed, we can safely conclude, is not everything. Nor are aces. On the aces leaderboard Federer was only 12th, with 48. Yet until Wednesday's quarter-final, when Lleyton Hewitt took a single service break off him, he had not been broken for over 100 games here, going back to last year's tournament. He is a one-man counterblast to the notion that good serving is all about hammering aces.

Another notion took a knock yesterday, the one that holds that grass-court tennis in an English summer should always take place in the open air.

Although the All-England Club has announced that Centre Court will have its retractable roof by 2009, there are still some traditionalists around who believe that Wimbledon with a lid is as unthinkable as Alan Mills, the irreproachably proper tournament referee, stepping into the great arena wearing a pink tutu.

They have to be kidding. Not about Alan Mills, who probably needs to be surgically removed from his jacket and tie, but about Centre Court staying open to the elements. Federer v Grosjean, the first match on grass between two of the most attractive grass-court players in the world, should have been an uninterrupted feast, not a series of tasty snacks.

Twice the crowd trooped hopefully back to their seats, twice the players came out and started knocking up, and twice the rain began before a single further point was played. The match started at 1.03pm and at 6.46pm they had played for precisely an hour.

It was unspeakably frustrating, and I hadn't paid for my ticket. And yet even those who had spent their money agreed that tennis of this calibre was tennis worth waiting for.