WIMBLEDON -- It may have been the mildest fist pump in the history of the gesture. Arriving at set point in his first-round match against Dusan Lajovic here Monday, Roger Federer politely turned away from his opponent and lightly jiggled his left fist.
It was hardly necessary. The match was barely 20 minutes old, Federer already 5-1 up on an opponent who came into Wimbledon with a 4-16 career record on grass. But the challenge never gets old for the 36-year-old Federer, which helps explain why he once again, for the eighth time, earned the right to play the first Centre Court match of the tournament as defending champion.
He could be easily mistaken for Wimbledon's master of ceremonies instead of just one of 128 schmoes annually vying for the title. But the next time is still like the first time for him. The knees are a touch wobbly. The stomach flutters.
"It feels like walking out for a finals," Federer said Sunday of that opening match each year. "It's maybe more nerve-wracking, because you're not acclimatized to the court yet."
A first match on a near-pristine Wimbledon court might induce a little anxiety, and there was an almost-cruel urgency in Federer's 79-minute 6-1, 6-2, 6-4 victory Monday.
Lajovic managed to fend off three set points in that first set, but the final two points drove a dagger into his hopes. At deuce, Federer was pulled way off court by a fine cross-court volley. He sprinted and managed to flick a backhand pass going back the other way -- and parallel to the net -- past an astonished Lajovic. On set point, he fired a forehand that went off like dynamite on the far baseline, sending up a spume of chalk. Lajovic never recovered.
"I was nervous in the warm-up, in the five-minute hitting," Federer said after the victory. "When the match started, I really felt like my nerves settled. I returned well quickly. I felt my legs were moving. That's what gave me the confidence quickly to see, like, 'OK, I think I know very quickly within two to four games what I need to do to cause problems for Lajovic.'"
Federer had it relatively easy compared to his main rival, No. 2 seed Rafael Nadal, who will start his campaign Tuesday and enters the world's most renowned tournament stone cold.
Federer, who avoided the French Open and clay-court season entirely, prepared for Wimbledon by playing nine matches over 12 days in two tournaments on grass. Nadal has played none, as the "King of Clay" skipped the grass-court tuneups in order to rest and recover. Then he practiced on grass -- at home in Mallorca.
While preparation at tuneup events only goes so far at this major because grass courts vary so much and are maintained so differently, no tournament can match the mystique of Wimbledon.
"[It's] a little bit nerve-wracking, you know, in all honesty," Federer told reporters in his pre-tournament press conference Sunday. "It's a big deal. Besides the history and the mythical place that it is, you cannot also practice on [Centre Court]."
This from a man who has turned Centre Court into his own private castle, ATM machine and stage. Just imagine how Nadal must feel.
The two-time Wimbledon champion has fallen on hard times in recent years; since his last Wimbledon singles title in 2010, he's been a runner-up in 2011 and since hasn't bettered a pair of fourth-round losses in 2014 and 2017. Nadal is coming off another near-perfect but exhausting eight-week clay segment. And at 32, the transition doesn't get any easier.
Nadal said when he gets to Roland Garros, he knows his game as if it went through an MRI machine. Not so at Wimbledon.
"[Wimbledon] is one of these events that you arrive here and you really don't have the previous feeling of how you feel, how you are playing," Nadal said Saturday in his final pre-tournament gathering with the press. "You arrive here and you really don't know [it] very well. It is an event that you need to find your confidence during the tournament and during the practice week before."
Federer faces no such transitional issues. He targets Wimbledon and revels in the run-up to the tournament. For all his opening day jitters, he waxes poetic when he talks about the way the scene at Wimbledon is transformed as the tournament gets under way.
"When you come out, there's a bit of uncertainty," Federer said. "From a very quiet week and site, it's just packed everywhere. The entire atmosphere changes at Wimbledon and you realize the eyes are on you."
Nadal's anxiety is abetted by the trouble he's had against players, including rank journeymen, who can take advantage of his unique, clay-bred game with asymmetrical, attacking tennis on the faster grass surface.
That's not much of a problem for Federer, because he loves the grass courts and his style is tailor-made for success on the surface, even in this era of slightly slower, higher-bouncing grass. It has given him some protection from the titanic servers, while still enabling the crafty spin and slice artists to make Nadal's life troublesome.
"I see the grass a little bit longer than usual," Nadal said, clearly not entirely thrilled by the detail. "I don't know if it is because there is unbelievable weather [here] and they are trying to protect the grass like this. But that's it, no?"
Longer grass is slicker grass, with lower bounces and balls that swerve and skid more. That favors players who like to attack, and who can use the slice to keep the ball low enough to greatly reduce the efficiency of Nadal's groundstrokes. (Of course, there's a court-baking heat wave in progress in London, which ought to benefit Nadal, but never mind.)
It's easy to find a reason to feel anxious as the tournament they simply call "The Championships" gets underway, even Federer and Nadal go through it. That too is part of Wimbledon's mystique.