A swan dress in 2007. A shorts-and-waistcoat tu-xedo in 2008. A cropped, polo-neck jacket in 2009. Maria Sharapova unveils something vibrant every Wimbledon. The grunting may not add to her sex appeal, but when she’s stepping on court in all her girlie finery, the Russian is a fashion diva unmatched by any tennis player before or since her arrival.

Except, of course, for Roger Federer.

I’ve often wondered how anyone can support a man who comes to play tennis wearing a white coat with golden piping; who cries unabashedly in both victory and defeat; and who put on a blazer that had 15 emblazoned on it in shimmering letters, after last week’s Wimbledon made him arguably the greatest sporting icon of our generation.

The greatest sporting icon of our generation — this guy? Aren’t great sportsmen moody and mysterious? Don’t they talk tough before matches and kiss their biceps in their spare time? Surely, they’re not supposed to make us feel like we’ve died and gone to metro-sexual heaven?

The world is divided between those who are crazy about Federer, and those who grudgingly admire his genius but say they hate him. And it’s easy to understand why it must be difficult for some people to root for him — both for his chocolate-boy image, and for how he plays the game.

Oliver Holt of Daily Mirror wrote after Federer’s third win in 2005 that Wimbledon was witnessing a tyranny of beauty. Any tyranny, no matter how striking, gets stifling beyond a point. It leads to an uprising, and the general mood swings in the direction of anybody who has the chance of ending it.

... contd.