Murray's magic but he won't eclipse Nadal's epic ; I'm going to be in ecstasy watching our Scot bid to win the Wimbledon title but even if he does succeed the glory won't match last year's divine final

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BY way of cleansing the palate for the banquet of good cheer ahead, let's begin with the bad news. Nothing at Wimbledon will match last year's final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal ... an epic of such incomparable majesty that it should have ended with the ghost of Dan Maskell drifting down to that dusky Centre Court, like an absolute peach of a deus ex machina, to announce the abandonment of Wimbledon lest the memory be besmirched by future imitations.

Curiously, no such divine intervention took place. So here we are once again striving to contain the patriotic hope that has made the event such a perpetual torment since Tim Henman's emergence as a potential champion.

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Murray's magic but he won't eclipse Nadal's epic ; I'm going to be in ecstasy watching our Scot bid to win the Wimbledon title but even if he does succeed the glory won't match last year's divine final

This year it is worse than ever, of course, because where Tim was never more than a live outsider, Andy Murray is a worthy second favourite to replicate Fred Perry in more than pre-ferrestyle of pullov...

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