WASHINGTON, July 7 (UPI) -- Rafael Nadal is king of Wimbledon, king of the world, this week; Roger Federer, the greatest tennis player in the world on grass for the past five years, fell at his hands Sunday in a classic showdown. It's fiesta time in Spain, and a long, unexpected summer hangover has hit Federer's Switzerland.

It was a game for the ages. The young, 22-year-old "Rafa" Nadal took the first two sets 6-4, 6-4 from a hard-fighting but apparently outclassed Federer. But then the old champion fought back to win two successive sets by a hair's-breadth 6-7, 6-7. In the end, Nadal finally took the last set 9-7 after a 4-hour, 48-minute battle for the ages. No one who watched the game will ever forget it.

Although this year's Summer Olympic Games are in Beijing, it's already turned out to be the sports summer of dreams for Spain. Nadal's epic win over one of the greatest of Wimbledon champions came only a week after the Spanish soccer team, with King Juan Carlos in attendance, beat Germany 1-0 to win the UEFA Cup -- the European national soccer championship. It was the first time any Spanish national team had won any major soccer trophy in 44 years. And it was the first time any Spaniard had ever conquered Wimbledon's fabled Center Court in 42 years since Manuel Santana took the title at the All England Club in 1966.

It's easy to sneer at or take superior potshots at the role of mass-audience sport in the modern world, but usually the effects of nations participating in international sport are overwhelmingly positive. Classic competitions and tournaments provide harmless pleasure and entertainment for hundreds of millions of people, and they offer a non-violent outlet and safety valve for personal and national aggression. The Olympics and tournaments like Wimbledon offer a vastly more popular -- and credible -- platform to showcase international friendship and shared values and participation in sports than most of the day-to-day workings of the U.N. Secretariat and Security Council in New York. The great ceremonies that open and end the Olympic Games obviously do not reflect the dark, intractable realities of a divided and complex world, but they do remind us of the idealistic visions of global tolerance, good will and amity to which every decent person aspires.

Nadal's victory over Federer also confirms the excellent sporting advice given by the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible that nothing is certain in life, especially the outcomes everyone thinks in advance are certain. Roger Federer had won five Wimbledon men's singles titles in a row. He had roared through the competition as usual, including the semifinals, looking as invincible as ever. Everyone knew Nadal was good and on a roll -- after all, he took the French Open title this year -- but no one outside Spain and his hard-core supporters gave him any chance of victory against the apparently still invincible Federer. But as Ecclesiastes said, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong."

Nadal's fabulous victory did not come easy, and Federer, like the great champions of old, did not fold. He went down fighting, and it was a nail-biter to the end. That made Nadal's triumph all the sweeter. His gift to the Spanish people was their second blowout weekend of national rejoicing in a row.

Such things are not negligible. National populations, like individuals, need the chance for collective experiences of intense shared emotions to bond them together, give them a bounce in their step through the good times in life and the morale, fortitude and warm memories to carry them through the darker days as well. Nadal and Federer gave the world -- and especially the Spanish people -- that priceless gift.