Strokes of Genius

On 6 July 2008 Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal met in the Wimbledon final. The match was interrupted by rain, restarted, went to five sets and finished as darkness fell; Nadal won. The documentary makes that single match the spine of its narrative and fits the two players' lives inside that frame: one raised in Switzerland, the other in Mallorca, two people who came to the game from entirely different places. In Andrew Douglas's film the players themselves, their families and their coaches talk, and figures like John McEnroe, Björn Borg, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova explain where that match sits in the history of tennis. The real subject is a rivalry that never turned into enmity. The account the film draws on comes from the sportswriter Jon Wertheim's work on the same match.