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The Ladies final, and a fourth win in six finals for Venus Williams. Who would ever write-off a Williams at any tournament, and especially at Wimbledon. The two Wimbledon finals she lost? They were both against her sister.

Basically, Marion Bartoli said she lost because Venus hit her serve so hard. Made her wrist hurt. I used to not like the way The Sisters battered every opponent into submission, and it revived ugly memories of that. At least these days they don’t do it all the time, so that’s okay. “Obviously I feel fantastic,” said Venus. “My sixth Slam. I want some more. My main goal is definitely to stay fit. Right now I'm a little taxed, but hopefully it will be like finished (soon). “This win, it's so much different from the others because the other ones I felt like I was playing in championship form from minute one. Here I really had to focus on my game, you know, overcome a lot of challenges, including obviously being seeded low, those kinds of things. All in all, it's wonderful.” Of course Bartoli was disappointed to lose. Wimbledon actually means more to her than her native French Open. “I love the French Open because, first of all, I love Paris,” she said. “Paris for me is a beautiful city in the world, by far. Of course, I want to do well because I'm French. But, you know, Wimbledon is so special because of all those traditions. To go through this locker room and see the trophies, and you walk into that court, you know you're a part of history. “I mean, it's going to be forever. I will be the finalist of Wimbledon in '07, and you feel that so much. You feel the crowd. The court, it's like you have the crowd so close to you, you feel it. You feel the people are cheering for you. I feel all this tradition, and the Prince coming to the courts, all this stuff makes this tournament really, really special.”

Marion has hidden qualities, by the way. Like Venus with all her away-from-the-court interests, Bartoli also has pastimes.

“I do oil painting and water painting,” she told me earlier this year. “But it’s hard to bring on tour because oil painting, it takes at least 10 days to dry, and I only stay seven days in the same place. If you put paper over it to take it on the plane the paper sticks on it, so it’s not good. The water paints, it’s a real tough thing to travel with so it’s hard to bring it on the tour.”

Something else. Although Pierce Brosnan had to attend a wedding and couldn’t be at the match, he sent a bouquet and letter to her after she had said on Friday how much she liked him. Nice.

The weather, and the matches, took their toll on Novak Djokovic and Richard Gasquet, with both carrying weary limbs and injury into their semi-finals. Neither had time to recover from their lengthy quarter-final matches on Friday, denied the traditional day off between by the tournament having to play catch-up after rain had affected play on almost every day.

Djokovic had a very nasty blister, as well as a bad back, and considered not even playing. He even avoided Rafael Nadal in the locker room so the Spaniard wouldn’t see how bad he felt.

“I was trying to avoid him and his sight,” the Serb admitted. “My intentions before the match were not to, you know, show him that I am weak, whatever, so he can be at an advantage.

“I stopped because of the blister. It's not just the blister I have. It's a big infection from yesterday after the match. I didn't sleep during the night because I had a lot of bleeding and everything, so I was barely walking this morning. I was thinking, ‘Should I go and play?’ It was that serious.

“On the other hand, it was not only that. It was, again, my back which was a problem in the last couple of days and basically all my body. I'm really tired and exhausted. You know, if you see the time, the length of my matches in three days, you realise everything. I mean, everybody is human.”

Gasquet, too, was not in the best of shape, with an ankle injury. And he was disappointed after having to return at noon the next day after finishing at 8pm.

Still, the outcome might well have been the same. Djokovic and Gasquet are still players of tomorrow as far as Grand Slams are concerned, although Novak is now ranked three in the world after his outstanding season so far. He’s slowing down now, by the way, playing less tournaments.

“I'm going to try to reduce my tournaments as much as I can because I've played a lot, really a lot of matches,” said Djokovic. “I'm not used to that. I had a really difficult season, no rest basically in six, seven months. I didn't have four or five days off.

But he is proud to have risen so high, so young. he’s 20.

“It means the world to me, for sure. It's the highest ranking I ever had. It's something special to be third player of the world right after the two most dominant players in tennis. You know, just that fact gives me more motivation and confidence, you know, to work hard and more so I can become a number one player of the world, which I think I can do.”