The first week of Wimbledon is now over. Federer and Nadal almost kicked the bucket, all the British interest evaporated other than Andy Murray, the women’s game is still largely forgettable but that’s not been the big story.

No, that’s been the three-day or eleven hour match, which finished 70-68 in the fifth set.

Much has been made of this on the physical level. John McEnroe was particularly gushing in his praise for the stamina of the players, and how this would result in a much better appreciation of tennis players as athletes. I’m not quite as impressed as a lot of people – not that I’d be up for doing this myself. Then again, I don’t make a living playing a game on a world tour and making a reasonable sum of cash for it. In other words, they are professionals.

After the match, the players proclaimed it as “the greatest match ever” – it was certainly the longest. It certainly captured the imagination of the public. It wasn’t Nadal v Federer Wimbledon 2008. It wasn’t rapier quality, but it was an awful lot of quantity. The match was effectively common fare – until neither player could put the match away. It was less about not making mistakes, more that the opponent was too tired to do very much about them.

However, you do have to say that whilst the men’s game was capable of this, you just couldn’t see the women’s game managing similar fare. To be honest, the women’s game is a joke until you get to the quarter finals. Service games are broken almost on a round robin basis. They can’t even play three sets in a Grand Slam at a reasonable standard, let alone the five of the men. But they get the same prize money strangely enough for sub-par entertainment.

The attraction, literally, is that a good number of them are quite pleasing on the eye and whom you wouldn’t kick out of bed for eating crisps. Whilst really condescending, it’s unfortunately true.