Andy's inspired kids to play tennis..on Wii.

Byline: Tam Cowan 

JUST think, the fact you need to win by two clear games in the fifth set means this year's epic Men's Singles Final at Wimbledon could STILL be in progress today.

If Roger Federer hadn't managed to eventually break Andy Roddick's serve, the match could now be on its fourth day, with the final set beautifully poised at 837-836...

And you know what? I bet neither super-fit athlete would have grumbled.

Sunday's thriller lasted an energy-sapping four hours and 18 minutes - the players were on court longer than some folk go on holiday - and they certainly put our Pansy Potter footballers to shame.

Hopefully, players and managers will never again have the brass-neck to complain about playing two games in a week.

And I wonder if Kris Boyd - the Rangers striker who famously complained it was too hot at Hampden after getting hooked at half-time in the Scottish Cup Final - will have the guts to show his face again after watching Federer and Roddick slogging it out for four hours in the SW19 sauna?

Eventual champ Federer was watched by his heavily pregnant wife, Mirka, and, the way the marathon match was going, I had visions of Roger lifting the trophy while the pair of them waved the wee one off on its first day at school.

Amazingly, though, even after this ultimate endurance test, some crackpots were still insisting it's right that women tennis players pocket the same prize money as the men.

That's crazy. The women's final (pit-patpit-pat-zzz...) lasted a mere 90 minutes and they don't deserve anything like the men's pay packets.

Apart from anything else, with all that extra time on their hands, the women could make up the difference by getting a wee cleaning job on the side.

My wife only had eyes for one man at Wimbledon - our very own Andy Murray, the man we all hoped would roger Federer - and I sensed a definite crush when she begged me to wear the Murray face-mask from last week's paper when we went to bed.

No bother, I thought, makes a pleasant change from the polythene bag I'm normally asked to wear.

I've already joked about the Murray mask being so life-like that I started talking with a strange American drawl, but I was put straight on this matter at the weekend by an Off The Ball listener.

He said: "There's nothing weird about Andy's accent - they all talk like that in Dunblane."

Anyway, folks, while there's no point tuning into the 2010 Men's Singles atWimbledon - well, according to the frenzied media, it would appear Murray has already won it - I must take issue with the so-called experts who say Andy has encouraged thousands of Scottish kids to play tennis.

Aye right. I think they mean he's encouraged thousands of Scottish kids to play tennis... on their Nintendo Wii.

Kids don't do fresh air these days and, at the risk of sounding as though I'm 104-years-old, it was different when I were a lad.

We never watchedWimbledon on the telly - we were far too busy playing tennis on the main road at the bottom of our street.

An old washing-line was tied to the gaswork's fence and held at net height by a shopping trolley at the other end of the pavement. The lines were marked out with a big slab of that chalky stuff which - a bit like discarded, second-hand scud books - you never see anymore.

And we could enjoy uninterrupted play for hours at a time because, unlike now, cars were a luxury item and we didn't have to take down the rope every two minutes to let them drive past.

Just think, if it wasn't for all those other fantastic distractions when I was a kid - raiding gardens for tumshies, chapping doors and running away, setting fire to a paper bag with a dog turd inside it and leaving it on an old dear's doorstep so she'd unwittingly stamp it out with her foot - I could have been a Wimbledon champ.

CAPTION(S):

CLOSE CALL: Federer's wife Mirka CHANGE OF ACCENT: Andy Murray