The final grand slam tournament of the year, which begins on Monday at Flushing Meadows, will welcome the world's two highest ranked players in intimidating form.

Two Masters tournaments, the level below a grand slam, have been played this month with Murray triumphing in Montreal and Federer in Cincinnati. 

Rafa Nadal has struggled to recover from the knee injuries that kept him out of Wimbledon, while a supporting cast of Djokovic, Roddick and Del Potro does not look strong enough to challenge the dominating duo on their favoured New York hard courts.

Looking just at the top two, Federer has the edge. The Swiss won his most recent encounter with Murray, in the Cincinatti semi-finals, has won three of the past four grand slam tournaments. And, oh yes, he is the five time defending US Open champion.

On top of that, when the two met in the final last year Federer won at a stroll. He played beautiful tennis as he destroyed Murray 6-2 7-5 6-2. The first set of the match was telling. A nerveless Federer repeatedly held serve with ease, and waited for first-night errors from his opponent, a grand slam final debutant. They duly came in the sixth game. The Fed broke for 4-2 and never looked back.

So what hope can Murray cling to as he embarks on his quest this year? Well, to get to last year's final he had to beat the then world number one Nadal over five sets and two days -- by far the greatest triumph of his career to date. Even if he wasn't tired after that, and remember Murray is ultra-fit, a man who does sets of 400 metre sprints in the heat of Miami for fun, the mental effort would have been extraordinary. 

Then there is their head to head record, which Murray leads 6-3. The Fed is nearly six years older and has made it clear he feels uncomfortable playing against Murray's attritional style. And his wife Mirka has just had twins, with one of them called Charlene -- suggesting a serious lack of judgment on Roger's part (sorry Roger, only joking).

But who are we kidding?

Federer has an incredible power on court, and the ability to win the key points and games to relentlessly accumulate major titles. Only Nadal at his rampaging best has broken through his force-field, and even then in two nail-biting five-set finals at Wimbledon and in Australia.

A 16th grand slam awaits Roger Federer.

PHOTO: Roger Federer talks with Andy Murray after winning his fifth straight U.S. Open tennis title at Flushing Meadows in New York September 8, 2008. REUTERS/Kena Betancur

The build-up to Friday's second Wimbledon semi-final was all about Briton Andy Murray but the man of the hour was the fearless American Andy Roddick.

Sat on a packed and sunny Centre Court, the prospect of Murray's party being gate-crashed did not take long to dawn on a crowd who did not seem sure who they should be cheering for.

Roddick never stopped playing like a man on a mission, contesting every point while Murray's more subtle, patient approach was not coming to fruition as many had predicted.

Murray produced glimpses of magic and he stood up bravely to return many of Roddick's meteoric serves, which hit a staggering speed of 143MPH, but his own first serve let him down too often and the passing shots he regularly makes went amiss.

On paper, this was a match Murray was meant to win, but in reality the world number three was outplayed by sixth seed Roddick whose recent good form has coincided with a much fitter physique.

At 22-years-old, a grand slam semi-final still represents progress for Murray and the defeat will by no means damage his confidence or reputation -- British fans will just have to wait a little longer for a homegrown Wimbledon finalist. After all it has been 71 years already.

However, tennis fans will not begrudge Roddick, a former world number one and the 2003 U.S. Open champion, another chance to renew his rivalry with defending champion and overwhelming favourite Roger Federer in Sunday's final.

If Roddick serves like he did on Friday, he has a chance, don't you reckon?

ANDY 1: Andy Roddick seems scarcely able to believe his won over Andy Murray in their semi-final at Wimbledon, July 3, 2009. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh

ANDY 2: Murray's expression says it all. REUTERS/Toby Melville

Andy Murray's brutal straight sets victory over Juan Carlos Ferrero took him through to the semi-finals at Wimbledon for the first time in his career on Wednesday but while the centre court fans and the Henman Hill mob did their Mexican waves one man was singularly unimpressed by the Murraymania.

Murray himself is doing his best to let the media frenzy pass him by. He may have received notes of encouragement from the Queen, Sean Connery and Cliff Richard, and he knows he will be all over the front and back pages of the newspapers again on Thursday, but to say the Scot is staying cool would be a massive understatement. Here's what he said after the 7-5 6-3 6-2 win over Ferrero:

"It doesn't make any difference the way you perform, the hype. If you spend the whole time, if you work in the media and spend a lot of time reading the papers, watching everything on the TV, getting said all the things that are getting said on the radio, then you get caught up in it.

If you ignore it you don't realize it's happening. You don't take anything that's being said about you. You know, I don't read it because 90% of the stuff's gonna be pretty much untrue anyway."

Ouch.

Murray didn't sound too impressed to hear that Kate Winslet had been in the crowd either, although he did concede it might be good for the sport.

"I think it's good for tennis any time you get, you know, big stars or celebrities coming to watch. It makes it, I guess, cooler for kids and stuff, which is important in this country."

PHOTO: Andy Murray returns the ball to Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain during their quarter-final at Wimbledon, July 1, 2009. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh

Royal Bank of Scotland is not best known for backing winners.

So the Scottish bank must be savouring Andy Murray's run at the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

World number three Murray is one of the "sports personalities of present and past" sponsored by RBS during the heady days of Sir Fred Goodwin.

Murray must count as one of Sir Fred's more inspired investments. Murray's play has literally gone from strength to strength -- all the time with the RBS logo emblazoned on his shirt sleeve.

Stephen Hester, Goodwin's successor as chief executive of RBS, must be hoping Murray maintains his winning streak and goes all the way to the Wimbledon men's final.

It's about time RBS employees -- and shareholders including the British government -- had something to cheer about.

No doubt British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling will also be willing fellow Scot Murray to victory -- they could both do with the "feel-good" factor of a British Wimbledon win.

A bit like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas, parliamentarian John Mann has called on the likes of tennis player Andy Murray, equestrian star Zara Phillips and motor racing great Sir Jackie Stewart to scrap their sponsorship contracts with the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Bleeding red all over its accounts and shedding thousands of jobs, the struggling Scottish bank has been heavily criticised for doling out bonus payments to staff despite receiving billions of pounds of state aid.

So the relevation RBS has splashed out 200 million pounds on sports sponsorship - the bank also has a promotion deal with the rugby union Six Nations tournament - has come at the worst possible time.

“That level of excess clearly can’t be justified,” said Mann. “Not one ambassador, but loads, not short-term contracts, but long-term contracts, not small amounts of money, but large amounts of money.”

“I think it would go down very well with the British public if some of them were to cancel their contracts. Some of them would become real heroes if they did. I think they need to consider that this is borrowers’ money we are talking about.”

Should Murray, Phillips and Stewart scrap their contracts and should banks be sponsoring sports stars in the new frugal economic climate?

**** For full coverage of Wimbledon click here ****

Andy Murray made a great show of pointing to his bicep after his 5-sets win over Richard Gasquet but when it comes to muscles, his next opponent, Rafael Nadal wins hands down.

Widely regarded as the fittest and strongest man on the professional circuit, Nadal has been in powerful form on grass over the past month and is a formidable barrier in the way of Murray’s ambition to become the first British men’s singles winner since 1936.

Murray is aware of the task ahead but says he has had chances against Nadal before on fast surfaces. All is not lost.

Do you think the stronger, fitter and apparently more focused Murray can beat Nadal this time?

       **** For full coverage of Wimbledon click here ****

Thank heavens colour television was up and running in Britain when we had our last Wimbledon singles winner.

Virginia Wade it was, 41 years ago to be precise (and if memory serves she was wearing a cardigan at the time. Plus ca change.)

British tennis doesn’t have to suffer the indignity heaped upon fans who have to watch black and white TV clips to relive the last time we won anything big in soccer — the 1966 World Cup.

The flickering images accompanying Kenneth Wolstenholme’s famous “they think it’s all over,” line look like something from an early moon lander nowadays and just ram home the fact that it was all so long ago. Viewers of the 1977 women’s final, complete with Dan Maskell’s rapturous “Oh, I say, Virginias,”  could at least see that Wade’s cardigan was pink.

But even so, our losing streak at the All England Lawn Tennis Club must have broken all kinds of laws of averages. Surely a nation of so many millions should statistically have thrown up another men’s champion by now instead of us having to look back to Fred Perry in 1936.

Its dismal failure to do so, despite some worthy efforts in the 1960s, perhaps in part explains why the cheery Wimbledon crowds and their determination to get behind the British players come in for so much sneering. With their “Henmania” and now, apparently, their “Andymonium,” they represent the triumph of hope over experience and, as such, an easy target — like flat-Earth believers. 

They should not take the stick lying down. They should point out that even if we can’t win it, the world still regards Wimbledon as the greatest tennis tournament and one that, for all its inbuilt snobbery, still lets people in without pre-booked tickets at reasonable turnstile prices and refuses to sell out to advertisers by splattering the court surrounds with hoardings and logos.

They should remind the knockers too that the world’s best players want to take part so much that they leave behind their fancy coloured gear and grudgingly conform to the tournament’s “predominantly white” clothes rule, even at the risk of making some of them look like ordinary public court hackers.

There are reasons to be cheerful, the tennis pendulum will swing back our way from eastern Europe one day – and before global warming has turned the lawns of SW19 into dust, there will be another British champion.

You read it here first