There are few, if any, other sporting tournaments in the world that embody tradition as much as Wimbledon. As the sun beats down upon the lush green grass on the first Monday we prepare ourselves for a mouth-watering fortnight. Very rarely does it disappoint, perhaps in 2002 it was underwhelming as the metronomic, yet distinctly uninspiring, Lleyton Hewitt, took the crown. Ten years on and that result has paled into insignificance. Wimbledon is sure to create talking points, but not in the way football or boxing might, purely in terms of the sporting genius it produces. Two years ago we saw the now infamous Isner-Mahut match, arguably the greatest show of stamina in sporting history.
Come 2012 and we have seen the greatest shock in tennis history as Rafael Nadal, one of the five greatest players ever, was beaten by unknown Czech, Lukas Rosol. No one in the tennis world had heard of Rosol, certainly the BBC Live Text commentary team hadn't, judging by what a certain Ben Dirs wrote "You have to say Rosol's got two hopes of winning this: slim and none, and slim's got his bags packed and is about to leave town...". With the benefit of hindsight he has made himself look a tad foolish, however at the point of writing almost the entirety of his readers would have agreed - he would have been a fool to suggest anything but a Nadal win. Rosol played five blistering sets of tennis, hitting winners in excess of 90mph off both flanks and serving with so much gusto it would have hurt. Only the entrapments of Wimbledon could have inspired Rosol to such levels - he shall never reach the levels of that performance again.
Arguably a harder achievement, although many would disagree due to the state of the women's game at present, is the accomplishment of the Golden Set. A set in which a player wins 24 straight points which culminates in a 6-0 thrashing of their opponent. Yaroslava Shvedova reached these dizzy heights as she took the first set off French Open finalist, Sara Errani. A result which, on the face of it (a 6-0 whitewash), would be squeezed into 10 seconds of highlights on Today at Wimbledon, but under closer inspection is one of the grandest achievements in tennis history - the first time this feat has been completed. Such is the magnitude of completing a Golden Set it made the front page of every Sport's media outlet. Just as the likes of the Isner-Mahut marathon will never be seen again in my lifetime, nor will a Golden Set.
It is events like these that make Wimbledon such a prestigious and world renowned spectacle, a tournament unrivalled by any other. However good the Golden Set is, unless something momentous happens in the next 6 days, Wimbledon 2012 will be remembered as the tournament when Nadal was beaten by a man playing so well Tim Henman labelled him a "freak".
N.B - Andy Murray still feigns injury when he is losing.