Long live the Rajah

Roger Federer is now firmly entrenched as the most successful Grand Slam champion of all-time. There are numerous asterisk's that accompany this accomplishment but none of them concern him (Rod Laver missed 5 years worth of Grand Slams as he was ineligible to compete, Bjorn Borg never bothered to play the Australian Open after one attempt early on in his career, etc.).

For now, barely a year after Rafael Nadal broke through at Wimbledon and a few months after many folks (including me, I must admit) wondered if he would get back to his old self, Federer has reclaimed the #1 ranking.

SI.com put together a list of Federer's accomplishments in numeric form. The most amazing number in there for me is this one:

21 -- Consecutive appearances in Grand Slam semifinals, perhaps the most extraordinary metric of Federer's otherworldly consistency.

Greg Garber of ESPN.com salutes the maestro a few hours after the Wimbledon triumph.

Federer will not be content with 15 major titles. He arrived for his postmatch interview wearing a shirt bearing his new agenda: There is no finish line.

Here's a longer report of the final against Andy Roddick, with a comparison to Pete Sampras, whose record he broke.

The statistics were eye-catching: Federer's 50 aces were one short of the Wimbledon record held by Ivo Karlovic. Federer had an incredible total of 107 winners, compared with 38 unforced errors. Roddick had 27 aces, 74 winners and 33 unforced mistakes.

By the way, the 50 aces by Federer are easily the most ever in a Grand Slam final. Surprisingly, hitting aces does not correlate all that well with victory, as this list reveals:

55 - Ivo Karlovic (Roland Garros 2009) 5 sets, lost to Lleyton Hewitt

54 - Gary Muller (Wimbledon 1993, qualifying match) 3 sets, defeated Peter Lundgren

51 - Joachim Johansson (Australian Open 2005 ) 4 sets, lost to Andre Agassi
51 - Ivo Karlovic (Wimbledon 2005) 5 sets, lost to Daniele Bracciali

50 - Chris Guccione (Wimbledon 2005, qualifying match) 3 sets, defeated Olivier Patience
50 - Gregory Carraz (Andrézieux 2004 - Challenger) 3 sets, defeated Tomas Zib *
50 - Roger Federer (Wimbledon 2009) 5 sets, defeated Andy Roddick

49 - Richard Krajicek (US Open 1999) 5 sets, lost to Yevgeny Kafelnikov

48 - Marc Rosset (Davis Cup 2001) 5 sets, lost to Arnaud Clement

47 - Gustavo Kuerten (Davis Cup 2003) 5 sets, lost to Daniel Nestor
47 - Gilles Muller (Australian Open 2009) 5 sets, defeated Feliciano Lopez

Finally, to round it off, my favorite tennis writer - L. Jon Wertheim has 50 parting shots from Wimbledon 2009.

• For the second straight major, the eight men's quarterfinalists were from eight different countries.

• Most underrated story: the Indian-Pakistani doubles team of Prakash Amritraj and Aisam-ul Haq Qureshi, won a few matches. Qureshi has now played with an Indian and an Israeli at Wimbledon. Small steps. But steps nonetheless.

• Here's Scott on the WTA ranking system: "The one place it doesn't stir a debate is in the locker room. The players believe in that ranking system. They believe the ranking is right. And I have not had one player come up to me and say, 'How can Dinara Safina be No. 1 in the world?'"

• Here's Serena Williams -- who apparently spends little time in aforementioned locker room -- on the same subject:

"I think if you hold three Grand Slam titles maybe you should be No. 1, but not on the WTA Tour obviously, so. ... You know, my motivation is maybe just to win another Grand Slam and stay No. 2, I guess (laughter). ... That's just shocking. But whatever. It is what it is. I'd rather definitely be No. 2 and hold three Grand Slams in the past year than be No. 1 and not have any. "

• Here's Serena again: "I feel like I've had a pretty consistent year, though, you know." Come again? You've won "only" two tournaments in 2009, but they've both been majors. And sandwiched between them was a four-match losing streak. What exactly constitutes an inconsistent year?