“I have a dinner date with Dame Maggie Smith after this.”

My excitement at the start of this year’s unusually controversial Wimbledon carried into the second week. Even without Serena Williams and Iga Świątek, who suffered early-round losses, there were intriguing matches to take in. (There was also the matter of Roger Federer appearing at the Parade of Champions, dressed in formal wear that was winkingly accentuated by white tennis shoes.) But the tournament has culminated in a championship weekend unlike any I can remember: I don’t particularly care about the outcome of either match.

On the women’s side, there’d been a sense of inevitability for the last week or so that this was Elena Rybakina’s for the taking. Wimbledon had banned players representing Russia and Belarus as a result of the Ukrainian invasion, but the ban didn’t take into account that matters of nationality are hopelessly tangled in tennis. Players with the option of playing for multiple countries (and there are many such wanderers) align themselves with whatever nation offers them the greatest support in developing their talent.

Naomi Osaka and men’s semifinalist Cam Norrie are prominent examples of players whose similar decisions greatly boosted their prospects. And now Rybakina’s the global poster girl for this phenomenon. She’s a Russian who circumvented the ban by way of a (rather dubious) affiliation with Kazakhstan established four years ago. Whether you find it laughable, maddening, or both, it’s tennis in a nutshell. (It’s also Russia in a nutshell. Parts of my family came to the US from Imperial Russia, but if you want to be more specific, they were from places like Ukraine.)

Rybakina’s draw was significantly tougher than that of Ons Jabeur, the Tunisian fan-favorite she met in the final. You wouldn’t have known this from the brainless way ESPN’s Chris Fowler and Chris Evert hyped Jabeur’s story, but it was obvious that Rybakina would dismantle her, which is what happened in the second and third sets of their fairly boring match. The cosmic joke of the tournament played out exactly as you expected, and mere minutes from now we may witness something similar on the men’s side.

There we have the normally very appealing matchup of Novak Djokovic and Nick Kyrgios. Djokovic was, for many years, my second-favorite men’s player after Federer. If I had to be brutally honest, I’d say that even if Federer is the greatest player of all time, and Nadal the greatest champion, Djokovic is likely the greatest competitor. However, his egocentrism and peddling of pseudoscience (why are those two qualities often so hopelessly intertwined?) culminated in a bunch of plague-spreading at the height of COVID.

His subsequent promotion of anti-vaccine views, and perennial whining about whether fans like him enough, has soured me on Djokovic to the point that I’ve continually rooted for Rafael Nadal to win Slams in recent years. (That’s anathema to many Federer fanatics for petty reasons that seem increasingly laughable as we all, players included, age.) But what do you do when he’s facing Nick Kyrgios? Kyrgios has always been as frustrating as he is magnificent. If there’s a player besides Federer or Serena I’d pay astronomical sums to watch in person, it would be Kyrgios—but only if there were assurances he wouldn’t tank the match or otherwise disrupt it with his on-court abusiveness.

There’s no player as aggravating to watch as the Australian, who is now pushing 30 and has often seemed vehemently opposed to ever reaching his dazzling full potential. It’s only natural that Kyrgios, the biggest talent with the least interest in external motivation, would bring his greatest effort to a Wimbledon that awards no points. He’s 2-0 against Djokovic, but winning Slams is muscle memory for Djokovic; there are some he could probably conquer in his sleep. I’m not sure that this one is really up-for-grabs, and I’m not sure how fans should react if Kyrgios wins, given that he currently stands accused of being abusive off-court as well. This outcome is obviously impossible, but I’d like both of these guys to lose after a close five sets.