Last summer, Simona Halep revealed that her friends call her “Money”. As nicknames go, it is not the most sophisticated, but after her victory over Serena Williams at Wimbledon on Saturday – where she claimed a prize of £2.5 million – you could not accuse it of being factually inaccurate.

Grand slam finals, of course, are rarely about the financial spoils. And this match perhaps even less than most. For Halep, it was her first final at SW19 and the first ever for a Romanian woman. For Williams, it was even more loaded: a chance not only to equal Margaret Court’s record of 24 grand slam singles titles, but to silence the critics who have questioned her form since her return to the sport at the end of 2017, after giving birth to daughter Olympia.

On paper, of course, Williams was the one to beat – this being her 11th Wimbledon final (she has won seven). Indeed, she had broken two records before even walking out on Centre Court: becoming the oldest finalist in the open era at 37 years and 290 days (pity the poor Wimbledon staffer who had to work that out) and achieving the longest gap between a first and most recent final – 18 years, surpassing Martina Navratilova’s 16.