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The now greatest player ever was bruised, but he wasn't beaten yet. After sustaining a barrage of aces, groundstroke winners and crisp volleys, Roger Federer faced two break points at 8-8 in the fifth set against American Andy Roddick, who was surely playing the Grand Slam match of his life in Sunday's Wimbledon final. But Federer did not want to walk away from the final like he did last year, his face splattered with tears after a wrenching 9-7 loss in the fifth set to Rafael Nadal. So this time, he responded, cracking a wicked service winner, launching another service...

With the blankest of blank expressions on their faces, these mysterious figures have been popping up in the most unlikely of places. The faceless mutants have a penchant for A-list celebrity bashes and have been spotted at Elton John's White tie ball and Harrods summer sale, opened by Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall.

To put it bluntly, everything you read today by sportswriters about tournament tennis prior to 1968 and the advent of the big-money professional game is completely wrong. For one thing, between 1930 and 1968 very few champions or top players were rich young men. Far from it....Perhaps from a distance they looked rich when they were tennis stars. They behaved like gentlemen. It was insisted upon.... But beginning in 1968, a strange reversal occurred. The teenagers could not act like adults because the adults -- even on Ivy League campuses -- had joined the kids, adopting their distinctive music, hair...

by Standard Reporter Venus and Serena Williams today denied claims that they had fixed matches. As Wimbledon got under way today, with fans queuing all night for tickets, the sisters denied that they played weakly against each other or pulled out of tournaments to avoid meeting. Venus, 22, told ITV's Tonight With Trevor McDonald: "I enjoy playing Serena as much as the other competitors." Serena, 20, added: "It's said (we decide who wins) but it's not true." Asked if they ever pulled out to avoid playing each other, she said: "It never happened."