On the face of it, this has been a glorious summer for professional tennis. The epic Wimbledon final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal transcended the sport pages and left even non-tennis fans delirious with pleasure.

For once, the tennis competition at the Olympics felt as if it belonged there; indeed, Nadal’s gold-medal performance, coinciding as it did with his ascent to the number-one ranking, made the event seem more like a fifth major championship than a distraction from the regular season.