Gentlemen's Final: Clearly one for the ages. Pardon the cliche, but it was a shame someone had to lose that match. A tie-break should be played in the fifth set. It would be more exciting. If acceptable in sets one through four, it should be used in set five as well.

Post-match climbing into the stands should be banned. What was novel and amusing when Pat Cash did it in 1987 is now neither. We assume you love your family and they love you. This self-indulgent exercise is disrespectful to everyone waiting for the award ceremony to commence. Other sports champions don't do it: neither should tennis. Some day a player will be injured imitating Edmund Hillary.

Will someone in the Rafael Nadal camp tell him to stop tugging at his...lower posterior region? If it is a service timing mechanism, please develop another one.

Ladies' Final: How can Venus Williams be beatable in other tournaments and invincible on Wimbledon's lawns? It's still tennis, after all. Enough with how very difficult it is for the sisters to play each other. "How can they possibly do it? Oh, the mixed emotions!"

Compete is what siblings do. They compete in checkers, video games, and who can run from here to there fastest. That is why the term sibling rivalry exists. It's a tennis match. As Boris Becker once said: "No one died out there." Dad Richard could not bear to watch. So he flew home, turned on the TV and watched. If a racehorse owner has two entries in the Kentucky Derby and they finish one-two he's ecstatic.

Serena's body type suggests that in retirement she'll resemble her non-playing female family members. That will limit her show-business aspirations. A heavy black entertainer better sing like Odetta or Mahalia Jackson.

Those Oldies but Goodies: Boris Becker is a charismatic guy. His shilling for a poker website in a US TV ad was strange. I suppose a gig is a gig. Who knows how much the site anteed up, so to speak. I loved Bjorn Borg the player, but he could be strange, even creepy, off court. He has evolved into an elder statesman of sorts. Now that Marcel Marceau has gone to that glass box in the sky, Billie Jean King is the whitest person this side of an albino convention.

Questions: Is the preponderance of sister acts in tennis happenstance or indicative of the greater ease in cracking the women's top 100 vis-a-vis the men's top 100? Re: Justin Gimelstob's stupid rants - is having a goofy name likely to make one a goof? And is it just me or does Elena Dementieva resemble singer Sheryl Crow?

Miscellany: Nathalie Dechy is making a nice transition from a singles player to a doubles player. Doubles teams cover their mouths when talking, ostensibly to prevent the opponents from reading their lips. Why not just turn away from them or speak without moving your lips much? Besides, the other team are usually busy talking to each other.

Every sport has a venue that is known for having knowledgeable fans. New York baseball fans are knowledgeable. In Track & Field it's Eugene, Oregon. Snooker has the Crucible. In tennis that venue is Wimbledon. They know when to cheer and when to be quiet.

Thanks, Wimbledon, for keeping the clothes white. Thanks, too, for keeping the surface grass.