Another Roger Federer-Rafael Nadal final, and what an absolute cracker! Who says tennis is predictable?

OK, so nobody really thought it was going to be anyone other than Federer and Nadal in the final this year, but I don’t think anyone expected Nadal to come out all guns blazing the way he did in the first two sets at Wimbledon.

I thought that Federer would do the business but, like many people, I was stunned by how well Nadal played, and how Federer managed to come back from the brink to take his biggest rival into a final set which the Spaniard eventually won 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (3-7), 6-7 (8-10), 9-7 from his fourth match point.

The rain delays undoubtedly helped Federer. He looked slow on too many points, off-balance and like he wanted to be somewhere else, and that first break saved him from suffering a potential straight sets disaster and turned the final into one of the greatest we have ever seen.

Federer is, perhaps rightly, lauded as the best tennis player the world has ever seen, which surely makes Rafael Nadal the second best player the world has ever seen. The shots that came off their rackets were phenomenal at times. You could take some of the greatest players from the past and give them the rackets the players use these days, and they would still not be able to deliver the pace and accuracy that Federer and Nadal can serve up.

We may never see a final at any tournament like that again, or we might just be lucky again next year with another Federer-Nadal thriller. If both men continue to play at the top of their game, it’s surely a distinct possibility.

The women’s final between the Williams sisters on Saturday was a bit of a damp squib in comparison with the men’s. It was always going to be hard-hitting, nothing-held-back tennis determined by reliable serves and accuracy of winners, and so it was to be as Venus won her fifth Wimbledon title against Serena.

From the middle of the first week, we could see who would make the finals at Wimbledon, but that’s not always the case on the hard courts of Flushing Meadows or Melbourne Park.

It’s up to the other players on the respective tours to learn to live with the best and improve their game year on year, as Nadal has done in recent years. If they can’t do that it will become predictable at certain tournaments.

Nobody can live with the pace and technical ability of Nadal on clay, and only Nadal can live with and defeat Federer on grass on the ATP tour, while few players on the WTA tour can live with the ferocity of shots and athleticism of the Williams sisters.

The women’s tour at the moment has a depth of talent, with the top 20 player all capable of winning Grand Slams. The men’s game will remain dominated by Federer and Nadal, as it has been for the last four years. There will be times when injury or illness will help another player break them, but it’s difficult to see anyone but Serbia’s Novak Djokovic being able to do that any time soon.