James Lawton: Supreme Djokovic gives game a fresh dimension

(DAVID ASHDOWN)

Novak Djokovic will, it seems reasonable to say, always be one of those men destined to spend many of his days along the narrow line between joy and sorrow. But if this can be a hard existence it sometimes also brings a supreme reward.

It can give you the exhilaration that less extreme, impassioned characters will never know – and it also bestows the kind of sublime experience Djokovic fashioned on the Centre Court yesterday when he not only beat Rafa Nadal but at times seemed to be introducing him quite brutally to a new game.

The game that has brought Nadal 10 Grand Slam titles is wonderfully strong, filled with a passion that rejects out of hand the concept of defeat. Yesterday, though, it foundered against a dimension that Djokovic sometimes inhabits uniquely. Nadal was simply broken apart by a quality of the Serb (above) who this morning is officially installed as the world's No 1 ranked player.

The honour comes from a year of astonishingly consistent play, one which brought a run of 43 victories – including four against Nadal – but its meaning inevitably shrivels against the reality of Djokovic's achievement when he won his third Grand Slam title 6-4, 6-1, 1-6, 6-3 in two hours, 29 minutes yesterday.

All through the tournament he had shown evidence of his potential to occupy new terrain, to play shots from the most improbable angles, to volley his way into situations at the net which guaranteed the most spectacular, even surreal action.

Over the days his eyes have flashed with both ecstasy and the extremes of frustration and yesterday, even as he marched to what he described as his "most precious dream", there was still much turbulence. However, there was also a burst of perfect tennis that seemed to carry him into a zone which had a population of just one.

Nadal, who had produced much of his trademarked combativeness in the first set, that force which had so overwhelmed the nerve of Andy Murray last Friday evening, was reduced almost to the role of a spectator. The ground shots that can turn so many opponents into the consistency of tomato purée were contemptuously swatted away by the champion-elect.

There were so many moments when the Centre Court, filled with partisans of Nadal except for a few joyous Serbs who were last heard singing into the twilight, reeled and gasped, along with Nadal, at the scale of the brilliance.

He hit the lines in a stream of virtuosity and nerve that tore apart the idea that this was a finely balanced duel between the world's two best players.

Later Nadal suggested that he didn't see much point in disputing the level of the challenge Djokovic had placed at his feet.

"Yes, thank you, I know," he said, when it was pointed out that this was his fifth defeat at the hand of the Serb this year. "Well," he added, "when one player beats you five times it is because my game doesn't bother him a lot. Today probably against me he's playing better than my level. I have to find solutions and that's what I have to try and that's what I'm gonna try."

This project involves not just a correction of some technical weaknesses but the very basis on which the game of today is played. As exemplified by Djokovic, it is a game of high risk, and high reward, and at its heart is the belief that who dares most consistently is likely to accumulate most success.

No one has ever charged Nadal with passivity or a loss of nerve but the bleak truth is that when he was swept to defeat in the fourth set it was largely on a tide of unforced errors. The forcing had come earlier, on the court and in the mind, from the man who later declared that he was born to win Wimbledon.

It is a presumption unlikely to be challenged for some time.