Tomorrow's tennis too good to miss

We love our Chevys, Fords, and Freedom Fries, especially around the 4^th of July. We love our baseball, our Tiger Woods, and our red, white, and blue. We’ll root for our swimmers in August, even when we don’t know the difference between the breast stroke and the butterfly.

We’re all proud to be Americans for one reason or another. But to the sports fan who’s disappointed that neither Andy Roddick nor James Blake will be playing in tomorrow’s Wimbledon Final, I have one piece of advice: Get up, and watch anyway.

Tomorrow’s Federer-Nadal matchup exemplifies everything great about sports. No. 1 vs. No. 2. The master vs. the apprentice (although Federer’s only four years older than Nadal and is still only 26). Two great competitors and athletes facing off on tennis’s biggest stage.

Tennis right now is everything that golf isn’t. There is no Nadal in golf to challenge Mr. Woods. This is the Borg-Connors-McEnroe, Sampras-Agassi rivalry that makes individual sports so great. Federer has one a million matches in a row on grass. Nadal owns him on clay at the French. Federer is the greatest, most dominant competitor not to swing a nine-iron this decade. Nadal is poised to prove that he can compete with numero uno any time, any place.

The Swiss hits from the right side with a devastating one-handed backhand similar to none. The Spaniard is a southpaw with a little-engine-that-could mentality and a left bicep the size of Shaq’s left foot.

Both hit shots that will make you leave your seat and both want this title more than the Cheeseheads miss their Holy One.

Tiger won’t be in red tomorrow and the Sawks-Yanks don't start ‘til sundown. No one will be chanting “U-S-A!” in London tomorrow. Nonetheless, I’ll be up at eight.

And if you call yourself a sports fan, I suggest you do the same.