Was that the best tennis match ever?

Did I just watch the greatest tennis match ever today?

The Wimbledon men’s final between Nadal and Federer today was amazing. Nothing more needs to be said.

OK, I’ll say some more.

I usually don’t watch too much tennis, even though I respect the sport greatly. However, it was Nadal and Federer, I was going to give it a chance.

I tried to wake up early today to watch it, but I missed the first set. When I saw that Nadal won the first set, I thought that Rafa would kind of cruise throughout. Then, Federer was up 4-2 in the second set, he was looking great. However, when Nadal came back and won that set, it looked like it was over. I was wrong.

It was similar to the golf U.S. Open final round that I watched a few weeks ago which was also my first true commitment to watching a sport in a long time.

I thought that Nadal was definitely going to win the match at this point. However, Federer came on in the third set and won the tiebreaker in that one.

The other crazy element to this match was the constant weather delay. That had to affect the play of the two guys in a good and bad way. The good part about it is that they got to rest some and preserve their energy. However, both of them had to stop playing and get warmed back up again which could be bad.

So the match is two sets to one in favor of Rafa and then things got legendary.

The fourth set was ridiculous. Each guy was hitting sick shots and just executing. One guy wasn’t making mistakes in so much the other guy was just executing well. Then the tiebreaker came. Rafa made one of the sickest shots I’ve ever seen to get a match point in the tiebreaker, before Federer made an even more amazing backhand shot down the baseline to tie up the score. It’s in the two minute mark on the video below. Keep in mind that these guys are doing this in the finals of Wimbledon.

Federer finds a way to win the fourth set and then the guys come back out for the fifth set, each with two games and then the rain came again.

The guys come back out after the delay and even played harder. I don’t know how many match points Nadal had that Federer fought off. Roger is the king of Wimbledon and he wasn’t going down easily.

Since there isn’t a tiebreaker in the fifth set, the guys keep playing until Nadal finally wins the set, 9-7.

It was also getting dark outside and there weren’t lights, so they had to finish it right then unless they would have had to play on Monday.

I was rooting for Nadal the entire time. I like Federer and think that he’s amazing, but there’s something about Rafa that wanted me to see him win today. Maybe it’s because he had never won Wimbleton, or that I dig lefties or the hair (which is awesome and I want it) or maybe the shorts (even cooler).

Overall, I was happy to see the competition and that’s why I work in sports. You really can’t find that type of competition in any other aspect of life.

It was the best tennis match that I’ve ever seen and if Luke Jensen, Bud Collins and John McEnroe, three tennis experts, agree with me, then its probably true.

Just like how I’ll watch the British Open and Ryder Cup because of my new interest in golf, I’ll be all over the U.S. Open in August.

Please watch the video below because my post doesn’t do this match justice.

http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?categoryId=2378529&brand=null&videoId=3475698&n8pe6c=2