Patrick Rafter is the better of the two players. The more talented. A better grass-court player. The reason Goran Ivanisevic has gotten where he has gotten is because of his serve. He's averaging over 25 aces a match. That's six to seven games throughout a match that he's winning on serve alone.

	Mal's Picks
	Washington Former ATP Tour pro MaliVai Washington is providing ESPN.com with in-depth analysis during Wimbledon. Washington, a tennis analyst for ESPN, reached the 1996 Wimbledon final.

That will be Rafter's biggest challenge: Can he break Ivanisevic's serve? Ivanisevic's serve gives him two advantages. It's so difficult to break that it affects your mind game. When you know that you're going to have a tough time breaking a serve, it puts more pressure on you to hold serve. On grass, a break can quickly turn a set, and if you let Ivanisevic break you -- you're going to lose the set. So if Rafter gets a handful of opportunities to break Ivanisevic's serve, he's got to take advantage.

If Ivanisevic's first serve percentage drops a few points that could be a big difference in the match. You've got to question how his nerves will hold up. He got a little tight serving for the match against Tim Henman in the semifinals on Sunday.

As he grows tense, Ivanisevic wants to put the match away quickly. Sometimes when he's serving and misses a first serve, even before his opponent is crouched, Ivanisevic is ready to go. The more nervous he gets, the more he speeds up on his own serve and little quirky things start to come out. When he hits an ace on the first set, he'll ask for that same ball back. In a tense time in the match or when he's feeling tense, he starts pulling up his socks, which are already pulled up. Those are some of the little quirky things he does. Rafter grabs his nose a lot when he's serving. He'll kind of pinch his nose. Watch for that on Monday as the match gets tense.

The great thing about Grand Slam finals is that you can throw all of the statistics and opinions -- everything on paper -- away. The player who can hold their nerve in the intense conditions and perform will win. Sometimes that has nothing to do with head-to-head records against a guy.

Ivanisevic feels like he has a great opportunity to do what he hasn't done at Wimbledon before. He has unfinished business with his fourth appearance in the final. He was very fortunate to get a wild card and he's taken advantage of it, which is a credit to him. He probably does feel that it is his destiny to win it.

But Rafter can feel the same way after losing in last year's final and making it all the way here again. With his talk of retiring, this is his opportunity to win a Grand Slam on grass. He has the game. He should win this championship.