Tennis Writer L. Jon Wertheim

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Ben Radford / Corbis

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal pose for photographs before the men's singles final on Day 13 of the 2008 Wimbledon tennis championship

In his new book, Strokes of Genius, L. Jon Wertheim reconstructs the 2008 Wimbledon final between Switzerland's Roger Federer and Spain's Rafael Nadal. That epic match — which took more than seven waterlogged hours to complete and ended with a Nadal victory in near darkness — is widely considered to be the greatest tennis match ever played. Strokes of Genius uses the match as a scaffolding to talk about the two tennis greats, their rivalry and the sport's beauty. TIME caught up with Wertheim, Sports Illustrated's tennis writer, as he prepared to cover Wimbledon 2009, which began on June 22.

You spent several months discovering what went on behind the scenes on the day of the match. What was the most interesting thing you learned?

Who knew that Federer ate candy bars before Grand Slam finals? The one request he's made to the All-England Club [which runs Wimbledon] is that they furnish the locker rooms with Kit Kats. The thing I found most remarkable is the Wimbledon locker room, which the players share. I played middle school basketball, and we wouldn't prepare in the same room as the opposition. These guys were in the fifth set of a Grand Slam final, with the rule of the sport hanging in the balance, and during the rain delays they are both repairing to the same little room. Tennis is incredibly intimate. Yet in this match there was no physical contact at all between the players until the end, when they shook hands at the net.

What went on during those two rain delays?

In the first rain delay Nadal was up two sets to love, and his uncle, Toni Nadal — who is also his coach — basically says, "You're up two sets to love. What do you need me for?" Then he actually took a nap in the locker room. [During] the second rain delay, in the fifth set, Uncle Toni is giving Nadal a pep talk, and Nadal interrupts him and says, "Look, don't worry. I won the first and second sets — I can win the final one."

It was a pretty incredible comeback by Federer just to get to that fifth set.

As familiar as Federer was to tennis fans at that point, he had never displayed a component of his character: It was the first time we had seen his "back-alley" side, as a fighter. And that's a quality he's called on repeatedly in the past year. After that loss, Federer got off the canvas. He pushed Nadal again in a great Australian Open final this year. He won the French Open. And while [last year's] Wimbledon final may prove to be the high point of the rivalry with Nadal, the rivalry didn't die that day. Even at this year's Wimbledon [at which Nadal isn't playing because of an injury], there's still the shadow of his win last year. The plot line is, Will Federer win the title back?

What did you learn about these two champions while writing the book?

The one thing that struck me was the gap between Federer's physical and mental abilities. He doesn't have this supreme confidence that other athletes have. As good as Tiger Woods is with a golf club, he also has this assassin quality to him. Federer doesn't have the ability to build his confidence up to the point of delusion. He's very realistic and rational. But that's not a knock on him. He displays real humanity, and you rarely get that with an athlete of his caliber. And it shows you how physically gifted he is, how good he is with a racket, that he has been so successful even without this samurai mind-set. Nadal is the opposite in some ways. He can blow a two-set lead, lose match points and still be absolutely confident that he's going to win.

What's your most enduring memory from that final?

There were a thousand individual memories — a tidy little package of what we like about sports. But there was one moment at the end, after the trophy presentation, when Federer and Nadal were circling the court in opposite directions with their trophies. And the place was dark but for everyone's camera flashes. Federer had his runner-up trophy — which was jarring in itself — and they had been fighting and battling, and they pass each other and sort of spontaneously they slap each other a high-five. It was a simple but unrehearsed gesture that for some reason I found so touching.

Disclosure: Sports Illustrated is owned by the same company that owns TIME, and Harrell occasionally writes about tennis for SI.com