Djokovic reaches new heights as a beautiful rivalry is born

TENNIS:THIS COULD be the start of a beautiful animosity. An hour into this Wimbledon final, with Novak Djokovic two sets up on Rafael Nadal and producing a display of frictionless, superbly athletic grass-court tennis on the way to a 6-4, 6-1, 1-6, 6-3 victory, it seemed we were witnessing the dawning of a personal era for the man who has now also overtaken Nadal at the top of the world rankings.

Afterwards Nadal, generous in defeat as ever, acknowledged his own status as “number two”. “He’s playing better than my level. Find solutions, that’s what I have to try and that’s what I’m going to try,” Nadal said, and no doubt he will be back.

Rather than a changing of the guard, it seems more likely something else is in the offing. Djokovic’s 41-match unbeaten run at the start of this year had led to talk of a “trivalry”, a three-man breakaway at the top of the men’s game. With Roger Federer losing meekly to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga here, this final has sharpened the picture. What we have instead right now is a rivalry: a clear-cut breakaway from the peloton by two men who look equipped to dominate for the foreseeable future.

Tennis will certainly hope so. This is a sport that thrives on high-end rivalries. As yet Nadal-Djokovic might be some way short of McEnroe-Borg status, but with the Serb at a new plateau of excellence their 28th career meeting (Nadal leads 16-12) is perhaps the moment to think about new eras. Scintillating, multi-skilled tennis seems guaranteed when these two meet, not to mention an unsurpassed level of athleticism. Yesterday there was also a sense of a twin-headed chemistry in the offing.

It has been suggested that the Wimbledon crowd, generally so easily wooed, has yet to fall in love with Djokovic, in the way it swoons for Rafa or dutifully tears its hair out over Andy. At the entrance of the players on to Centre Court there was a notable ratcheting up of the ovation as the bicep-flexing, star-jumping Nadal emerged behind the rather more self-contained Djokovic. Minutes later it was the Spaniard who drew whistles and shrieks as he exploded into his customary motivational sprint from chair to baseline.

As the match progressed, however, there was a sense of Djokovic’s own quiet charisma beginning to cast a spell.

At 4-1 in the second set the Serb employed his peerless defensive voodoo to wrest back at full stretch a thrusting Nadal overhead, drawing not so much a wave of throat-flushing ardour as purring approval at the nerveless supremacy of this balletically twisting, leaping Serb.

If Nadal looked a little bemused, so too did the scattered Nadal-istas, the calls of “come on Rafa” proclaimed with an unfamiliar beseeching note.

Even out on Wimbledon’s brimful big-screen picnic mount the crowd seemed split, the calls of “Vamos Rafa” giving way to a great, building, incredulous roar of approval as the Serb took the second set.

A clash of styles has lain behind the most notable tennis rivalries. Here we had a distinctly athletic collision, with something rhythmic too, the rallies unusually nuanced with Nadal unable to bully the defensively supreme Djokovic as he might others.

There was even an audible harmony, Nadal’s natural “hunngh” syncopating agreeably with the “wha-huh” Djokovic produces when pushed to his limits . . . hunngh . . . wha-huh . . . hunngh . . . wha-huh. Get used to it. This is perhaps what grand slam finals are going to sound like for the next few years.

For Djokovic this year’s rise by stealth to the peak of the men’s game is an unusually forceful mid-career progression, one that has so far proved beyond Andy Murray, his almost-exact contemporary in age.

Enthroned as world number one, and with two grand slams to his name this year, there are those with a vested interest in the men’s game who will hope Djokovic can raise his profile in a similar fashion.

This is a rather under-sold elite global sportsman, a champion who perhaps lacks a sense of widescreen sporting ego to go with his quirkiness and gentle humour. At the end of this match Djokovic collapsed, chewed on some Centre Court grass, and seemed to drink in rather than milk a genuinely warm ovation.

Wimbledon appeared to have a new favourite, and not just among the knot of shirtless Serbs who would later bring a jarringly unbuttoned show of sporting nationalism to the rather restrained byways of the All England Club.

The next few years of Nadal-Djokovic promise much more of the same.