An anomalous surface remains: se si stila a ranking of the best players on green in recent years, you get an almost complete upheaval compared to the normal ranking of the circuit. Yet a match today at Wimbledon offers a totally different spectacle compared to a match thirty years ago. We can say that they are two different sports. The techniques, styles, materials and bodies of the players have changed. The net game, which was prevalent at the All England Club, has almost completely disappeared. Yet, again, Wimbledon makes a great effort to give us the impression that nothing substantial has really changed with contemporary tennis – with its media and economic growth – compared to when, now almost one hundred and fifty years ago, the first edition of the tournament was played (200 spectators, 1 shilling the ticket cost). In this it has been helped in recent decades by Roger Federer, a neoclassical synthesis perfect for the brand of the tournament: the ideal of the modern but vintage tennis player. Stoic, silent, elegant, capable of sliding a few centimetres from the grass, without detaching a single thread. Federer was important in transporting the myth of Wimbledon intact into the contemporary world, unlike Djokovic, who has always been treated as an antagonist here, and has never felt at home in London, despite having won only one Slam less than Roger on the grass.
