Federer Record 8th Wimbledon Crown

Roger Federer made more history by winning his eighth Wimbledon title (the most by a male) and his nineteenth overall Grand Slam title (4 more than Rafa).

Sadly it was not in the greatest of circumstances because there was practically no opponent.  

Marin Cilic wasn't there, at least he was present in body, but the player whose talents and determination had brought him to win six matches at this tournament was nowhere to be found.  2017 saw the most one sided final since David Nalbandian said congratulations to Lleyton Hewitt in 2002 (coincidentally the year before Roger began his hobby of collecting GS trophies)

A mere ghost of Marin turned up to only give a yelp.  Roger of course happily thrashed the pants off the shell of Cilic, never looking in trouble. (faced one break point the entire match and that was saved consummately)

The first break came in game five and Cilic couldn't save the set. Serving at 3-5 and 30-0 to try and make Federer serve it out, Cilic threw in 3 forehand errors and a  double fault to finish the set 6-3 in Roger's favour.

Marin lost his serve straight away in set 2, giving Federer a 2-0 lead.  The backhand was breaking down now so nothing could help the Croatian out.

After Federer held for 3-0 Marin called for a medical time out although no obvious physical issues appeared to be hampering him.

Indeed he wasn't treated physically - he was just a mental wreck and needed some words of comfort and advice to stop the meltdown.

Back on court he held serve to the plaudits of the crowd.  That was however the final hurrah for Croatia for set two.  Despite holding two game points in his next service game Cilic managed to serve his way into bother and was broken, the game and effectively the set gone.

6-3 6-1 for Roger and the job was almost done - a quick Swiss assassination with a big payout.

Set three padded its way along to the 7th game where four errors from Cilic, two from each wing, were sufficient to donate the final break of the match to Federer, from which he nonchalantly completed victory in just an hour and 40 minutes 6-3 6-1 6-4.

Federer, to his credit, can only defeat what is thrown up against him, and he was fortunate this time that his main rivals were hamstrung with injury, or in Rafa's case simply outgunned earlier.

Roger played a brilliant tournament, and he would have been difficult for anyone to hurdle at any point, as Marin Cilic found to his utter disappointment in the final.

The rankings show Roger swapping spots with Stan Wawrinka, Roger now at 3 and Stan at 5.  Grigor Dimitrov slides back into the top ten at 10.  Murray's lead over Nadal has been sliced to less than 300 and Federer is closing close with no points to defend for the remainder of 2017. 

To illustrate just how Federer and Nadal have dominated in their respective comebacks, the year to date points leaders are:

Nadal            7095

Federer        6545

Thiem           3345

Wawrinka      3150

Cilic               2905

The following are some of the players who have achieved new career high rankings:

Pablo Carreno Busta - up 1 to 16 (prev high 17)

Gilles Muller - up 4 to 22 (prev high 26)

Mischa Zverev - up 2 to 28 (prev high 29)