Tennis and Tories occupy press

Selection processes are supposed to choose worthy winners - so there seems to be little wrong with Wimbledon.

John Parsons of The Daily Telegraph has been covering the finals for 42 years, and he calls yesterday's "the most thrilling" he has seen.

One of the best ever, says The Sun - and "not just because of the nail-biting finish and the brilliant tennis".

What made the final so special, it said, was the crowd.

"It was the best of British," says The Mirror. "A triumph... for sportsmanship and the fans."

The Times thought it was more like a football match than tennis - Australians and Croatians "draped in flags and wielding klaxons, whistles and inflatable kangaroos, chanted and screamed."

But, of course, it was the very special character of the triumphant Goran Ivanisevic which made the event.

"Goran the great," as The Daily Express calls him, before adding "the self-confessed schizophrenic from Split."

The Daily Mail calls him simply "the man who proves there is a God."

"He kept the faith," says the paper. "Yesterday God kept His part of the bargain."

The Independent, too, strikes a religious note, saying it was "a story of resurrection unparalleled in the annals of game."

As The Times says, when he came to the tournament, "it was all over for him: decline and fall had been completed, only oblivion was left. No normal man could have won from such a place... But Ivanisevic is not a normal man."

Too little talent

About that other contest - for the Tory leadership - there are more doubts.

The Independent thinks that, so far, there has been too little talent, too little purchase on public opinion, and an "almost complete lack of imaginative thinking."

"Uninspiring" says the Mail, "sheer poverty of vision."

"Shallow," says the Financial Times. The Times says "many Tories still think that they can endure by singing old hymns in a different key."

But choose Michael Portillo, says The Guardian, and the party is in for "a white knuckle ride."

Across two pages, the paper charts the changing fortunes and responses of someone it calls "a man who has learnt to adapt in order to survive."

Where other politicians have supporters, it says, he has fans.

And yet he is intellectual, arrogant, mistrusted, and prone to upset "the old guard" by confessing his personal secrets.

"Is there a real Portillo?" The Guardian asks.

"Probably only as there was a real Disraeli - a man who believed that without power, there is no point in principle."

Shimmering vision

Perhaps all you need to make a splash in politics is a new suit - at least, if you are Gerald Kaufman.

At his appearance in the Commons yesterday, "mayhem broke out," says the Telegraph.

There were "gasps of mingled delight and horror" says The Guardian.

"He looked as if Hannibal Lecter had taken up a job as a TV talent show host," writes Simon Hoggart.

"Mr Kaufman must be the only dandy who arrives at his tailor with a Dulux chart."

He looked, says Quentin Letts of the Mail, "like something that had been hit by an atom bomb... part copper, with a touch of red, it shimmered like an equatorial road in the midday sun."

And it had stripes, too.