What a pity that David Foster Wallace is not alive today. The American novelist, formerly a junior tennis prodigy in Illinois, was once the leading chronicler of Roger Federer’s greatness.

It was Foster Wallace who described Federer’s forehand as “a great liquid whip” and the man himself as “a creature whose body is both flesh and, somehow, light”. He rolled up a salvo of epigrams into a classic New York Times essay: “Roger Federer as Religious Experience.”

Had he lived, Foster Wallace might have reached an even higher plane of ecstasy today. At the age of 35 years and 11 months, Federer is about to play his 11th Wimbledon final. And over the first two-thirds of the 2017 tennis season, he has delivered the greatest tennis of his career.

If you don’t believe me, just ask Magnus Norman, the man widely seen as the world’s leading coach. At Queen’s last month, Norman told Telegraph Sport “For sure, Roger and Rafa [Nadal] are playing better now than they were ten years ago. They play closer to the baseline and they move much better, much faster. That’s the evolution of the game.”

Few Wimbledon finals have been as imbalanced as this one in terms of popular interest and support. Marin Cilic is perhaps less of an underdog than Cedric Pioline, the little-known Frenchman who mounted a doomed attempt to overcome Pete Sampras in 1997. But only just.