Two gems duel for the crown

The immediate difficulty, of course, is weighing recent results against more long-term evidence. It’s almost a case of choosing between form and history, specifically the near invincibility achieved by Djokovic this season and the half-dozen years of precocious brilliance that have brought Nadal 10 Grand Slam titles (including the Wimbledon crown twice) by the age of 25. When the Serb, who is slightly less than a year younger than Nadal, goes out to face the reigning champion today it will be his first experience of a Wimbledon final and he will be seeking his third success in a major championship, having won the Australian Open in 2008 and again last January.

There are, admittedly, factors to counter the discouragement implicit in the disparity of those records. Djokovic’s latest triumph in Melbourne, where he overwhelmed Murray in the final, was an early highlight of a sequence of performances so extraordinary that, whatever happens during the coming hours in SW19, he will replace Nadal at the top of the world rankings tomorrow. But neither that distinction nor the memory of having gone through 43 matches without defeat before Federer halted the run in a semi-final of the French Open will provide much consolation if he is beaten today. In tennis, as in golf, lasting status is never created by rankings, always by the amassing of major titles. So Djokovic’s dreams of turning 2011 into a personal annus mirabilis will draw their most genuine nourishment this morning from having won all of his four meetings with Nadal this year.

Both finalists are blessed with arsenals of agility, speed, athletic vigour and shot-making skills that are close to miraculous His overall statistics against the prodigy from Mallorca are highly impressive. He is the only rival to have reached double figures in wins over Nadal — the aggregate score from their confrontations is 16-11 in favour of the Spaniard — but nine of Djokovic’s victories have been gained on hard courts. And far more worrying in today’s context than his opponent's 2-0 superiority on grass is the fact that their five collisions in Grand Slam events haven’t produced a win for Djokovic. He is, however, likely to be buoyed up by a legitimate conviction that he has risen to a new level this year, technically improved after successfully addressing flaws in his serve and, he insists, healthier as a result of learning he was allergic to gluten and removing it from his diet.

Any hopes he had developed of finding himself opposing a diminished Nadal wouldn’t be bolstered by the sufferings of Murray on Friday. Some observers had pointed out that Nadal, notwithstanding his feat of capturing a sixth French Open title, had been dipping conspicuously below his usual majestic standards this season and when an injury to his left ankle and foot forced him to have pain-killing injections at Wimbledon, concerns about his ultimate prospects there were bound to grow.

But what he did in shrugging off the loss of the first set to Murray and then swiftly butchering the Scot’s self-belief reminded me of a conversation I’d had, in the company of a couple of colleagues, with the 1996 champion, Richard Krajicek, as twilight was enveloping the courts on Wednesday evening. Krajicek is too charming and too intelligent to spout aggressively vehement declarations and it was with a quiet earnestness in his voice that he said: “I think Rafa is stronger mentally than any other competitor I’ve ever seen, not just in tennis but in any sport.”

Of course, the dismantling of Murray’s spirit was partly an exercise in self-destruction. His basic misfortune is having been born into an age in which his route to major glory is blocked not by one but by several monstrous talents. However, his efforts to lift the Grand Slam trophy his abilities deserve will continue to be thwarted unless he eradicates the susceptibility to psychological unravelling that disfigured his challenge on Friday. With that one-set advantage secured and a 2-1 lead in the second set, he was presented with an easy opportunity for a killer forehand that would have given him two break points in the fourth game.

Hitting the shot long was bad enough but the effect he allowed the blunder to have on his morale was much worse. He lost the next seven games and never again seriously menaced Nadal’s progress to his 20th consecutive win at Wimbledon. As one of the BBC commentators said, an error that would have troubled the Spaniard for perhaps two seconds had devoured Murray’s concentration, and the loser’s denial of its significance was totally unconvincing.

Nadal will have more need of his mental resources today. Both finalists are blessed with magnificently comprehensive arsenals of agility, speed, athletic vigour and shot-making skills that are close to miraculous. No doubt we should refrain from trying to guess the outcome and simply revel in the contest. But I’ve got to say that I couldn’t bet against Nadal.

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Time running out for injured Tiger

Tiger Woods has not won on the USPGA Tour since September 2009 (Hunter Martin)

The bulk of the message coming across the Atlantic from Tiger Woods last week was in the form of a medical bulletin and, though vague and generalised, it could hardly have a cheering effect on those who share my view that the key events of world golf are regrettably distorted by his absence.

His cautious words at a press conference concerning the progress of recovery from his latest injuries (affecting his left knee and Achilles tendon) made it all but impossible to entertain the hope he will be on hand for the start of the Open on July 14. He said: “There’s no timetable ... I am going to come back when I’m 100% ready.”

Of course, the explosion of squalid revelations that threw the private and professional components of his life into turmoil slightly more than a year and a half ago stirred sufficient antipathy in some people to leave them convinced he would be doing the game a favour if he didn’t tee up in another major championship. But such harshness is strictly a minority attitude. If most golf devotees are unlikely to find Woods a cause for putting their compassion into overdrive, they do tend to recognise that genuine greatness is never so plentiful in their sport, or any other, that losing somebody as remarkable as he is wouldn’t be a deprivation of historic proportions.

It’s true that he hasn’t won on the USPGA Tour since September 2009 and that his form in the months before the injuries forced him to retire after half a round of the Players Championship in May had been thoroughly miserable, with a fourth-place finish in the Masters as the only glimpse of his former potency. And he would surely have been peripheral to Rory McIlroy’s triumph had he participated in the US Open. However, none of that should reduce the desire to see him back in action, fully fit and competitive and striving to close the gap between his haul of 14 major titles and Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18.

Yet it was somehow poignant that in claiming he would have plenty of time to realise his ambition the 35-year-old Tiger stressed the fact that Jack’s last major victory was in the Masters at the age of 46. There was an air of the miraculous at Augusta that day. Time was when Tiger left the craving of miracles to others.

Dazzling Eclipse

Neither the race nor the successful jockey turned out to have been over-promoted when a memorable Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown yesterday was thrillingly won by So You Think, one of the most celebrated thoroughbreds ever to be sent from the antipodes to compete on European tracks. The five-year-old, having been hailed as a superhorse on the basis of electrifying performances in Australia, suffered a dent to his reputation in losing a Royal Ascot contest at long odds-on. But unshaken faith in his talent was reflected in yesterday’s starting price of 6-4 on, which loaded extra responsibility on to his partner, Seamie Heffernan, a comparatively unheralded member of Aidan O’Brien’s Ballydoyle team. Heffernan coolly executed perfectly judged waiting tactics and So You Think mastered Workforce where it mattered to win by half a length.

The Eclipse justified its advance publicity, So You Think justified the Aussie boasts and Seamie Heffernan justified the confidence of those who know his worth.