Now and then a sports fan who is in most respects sane develops a slightly worrisome obsession with a professional athlete. Not the type of fixation that results in a restraining order or a basement full of autographed paraphernalia but a deep and abiding interest, with just a smidgen of worship-like the esteem you might have for a favorite songwriter or Civil War general. A sports crush, you might call it.

A symptom of a sports crush is a tendency to tape or TiVo any games or matches involving the athlete in question. The idea isn't so much to see who wins as it is to savor the finer moments, the dazzling displays of brilliance or even the subtle ones-to reaffirm that the fondness is warranted. For example, every now and then I like to replay a sequence from this year's Wimbledon. It is from a fourth-round match between the former number one Juan Carlos Ferrero, of Spain, and the current number one, Roger Federer, of Switzerland. Being a Federer guy, I recorded all of his matches during the tournament. The Ferrero match was neither Federer's best nor most important (those honors go to his masterful, all-too-brief dissection of Andy Roddick in the final), but it contains a slow-motion close-up that is sufficiently breathtaking to make it a good primer for the uninitiated-a kind of tennis porn. Federer is serving at 30-0, up 3-1 in the first set.

He serves, rushes the net, scoots to his left to hit a low forehand volley, then slides forward and right for the put-away. In the replay, his feet move over the grass as they would in a dream you might have of running without touching the ground. He is backlit by the late-afternoon sun. "You brought up Rod Laver," Cliff Drysdale, the TV commentator and former South African pro, says to his partner, Brad Gilbert, with a near-quaver in his voice. "But Federer is the best I've seen." A few minutes later they show the replay again, this time in super-slo-mo. "That was a thing of poetry," Gilbert says. Pause. Rewind. Play.