Long after they finish whipping topspin forehands for an excellent living, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal will share a link to Centre Court.
It is the tennis nostalgia factory yet still essential place where Nadal beat Federer in the 2008 final that belongs on anyone's short list of the greatest matches ever played.
But the classic rivals' Wimbledon roads and fortunes continue to diverge, and the latest evidence came on Thursday.
Federer, with his 34th birthday approaching, did another bravado impression of his dominant days at the All England Club to overwhelm Sam Querrey. Next on court, Nadal went down to another early-round defeat to a player with a ranking in triple digits.
After Lukas Rosol in 2012, Steve Darcis in 2013 and Nick Kyrgios last year, it was Dustin Brown, a journeyman from Germany with deep links to Jamaica, who took the star turn at Nadal's expense.
A stock list of verbs is deployed when a big name gets knocked out early at Wimbledon: stunned, ambushed, shocked and onward into hyperbole. At this stage, in light of Nadal's recent Wimbledons and his shaky form over the last year, it was no longer a genuine shock to see him go down in the second round here to anyone.
But there was no doubt that Brown's performance in a 7-5, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 victory was a stunner as he attacked the net with enough brio and skill to leave former Wimbledon champions like John McEnroe struggling to come up with superlatives.
Serve and volley - even in the grand old days - was perhaps never as spectacular or airborne as this.
"It was great to be able to do it that today and do it for that long," Brown said.
Long dreadlocks flying around his face after he hit his high-risk shots, he was a man with a plan, and he smartly stuck by it: pushing into the forecourt that has so often stayed virgin green in recent years during the first week.
He played his own service games at a breakneck pace that was quite a contrast with Nadal's short-grabbing and tactic-pondering on his own. There were leaping, double-handed backhand volley winners, overheads and deft half-volley drop shots that forced Nadal to stay closer to the baseline than usual to give himself a chance to react in time.