Let’s savour a summer of time-defying superhumans

Murray seemed set to retire as early as 2019 but has proved his mental strength countless times to come back since

SHAUN BROOKS/REX

It has finally caught Murray. Roger Federer has been in the stands here; it got him two years ago. Rafael Nadal was the absentee, trying to rebuild once more. And then there’s Djokovic, less than a month after surgery on a torn meniscus, managing to keep the flame burning when his should have been extinguished too. Never did Wimbledon have such an end-of-era feel to it.

There is a moment in the Federer retirement documentary, Twelve Final Days, when he reflects on how he confronted the reality of his waning powers, but it was not any feeling of defeat that came to his mind, nor a sense of mortality, nor the inability to function physically any longer like such a supreme being. It was how it looked and must have felt for those closest to him: his wife, Mirka, and his parents.

He reflects on his 2021 quarter-final defeat by Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz and imagined Mirka thinking: “Why are we still doing this?” or his parents “almost wanting to look the other way”.

Equally as beguiling as any part of the Big Four’s epic rivalry has been this window we have been peering through into how each of them, the greatest quartet of tennis players, has dealt with the process of inevitable decline.

Djokovic seems likely to be the last of the “Big Four” to bow out of tennis but each has left an indelible mark on the sport

SHAUN BROOKS/REX

“For me, it feels right to go first,” Federer says in Twelve Final Days.

“I always thought I’d be the first,” Nadal ponders, no doubt a reference to his attritional playing style and the self-inflicted punishment it reaped.

Murray let it go on far longer than Federer, who never wanted to look anything other than majestic. Murray allowed us to witness the decline and while some felt that tarnished his legacy, it seemed instead a marvellously selfless position to want to battle on even if he hasn’t been beyond the second round at Wimbledon for three years. It takes a modesty that is rare among superathletes to be content to expose yourself and your game — essentially your identity — on such very different terms.

Djokovic, you suspect, is closer to Federer. Murray said that all he had wanted, to be able to compete in the singles at this Wimbledon, was to be competitive. It is doubtful that Djokovic would have turned up if he didn’t think he could win the thing. Nadal, meanwhile, always has the clay to fall back on: I might struggle, but the clay will save me.

Yet, as we warm ourselves on the burning embers of these epic careers, we shouldn���t lose sight of their extraordinary longevity. Before Federer, a male player pushing his champion years into his mid-thirties simply wasn’t a concept.

Djokovic has won 12 of his 24 grand-slam titles in his thirties

THE MEGA AGENCY

Jimmy Connors seemed to go on for ever but he won his final Wimbledon at 29. Pete Sampras’s last was at 28. John McEnroe stopped winning at 26. Arthur Ashe was the outlier to win Wimbledon at 31 and then came Federer, still winning it at 35. Djokovic won it at 35. Nadal won the French at 36.

So, of all the many comparisons that have been made between these venerable heroes, here is another: that of everyone playing this long game, Djokovic has been the best in his thirties. Federer was in his thirties for only four of his 20 grand-slam titles; Murray’s three were all in his twenties, Nadal has won eight of his 22 in his thirties, but 12 of Djokovic’s 24 were in his fourth decade.

For how and why this has been the case, some fascinating answers can be found in Searching For Novak, the excellent new book by the tennis writer Mark Hodgkinson that was published this week.

It tells us how Djokovic believes in the benefits of the healing water that he has consumed from the tunnels beneath the Bosnian Pyramids. It has an anecdote from a former Serbia Davis Cup coach who was with Djokovic when the alarm on his phone started buzzing — to record that it was exactly a year since he last had a square of chocolate.

The dedication of the 37-year-old Djokovic to maintaining his physical condition has been key to his longevity

JOEL CARRETT/EPA

It reminds us that Djokovic was once considered physically fragile; it digs out an ancient Federer quote saying “I don’t trust his injuries”. Yet it goes on to quote Gebhard Gritsch, his long-term fitness coach, who says that Djokovic is the most flexible tennis player ever and that he turned himself into “the greatest athlete to have ever swung a racket”.

The book goes deep into Djokovic’s relentlessly open-minded search for any edge, physical or spiritual. For instance, Djokovic became fascinated with the Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla, who once claimed that he had created a death-ray that could melt the engines of enemy aircraft, to the point where he named his dog after him.

I recount these anecdotes not to prove that Djokovic was so very different but because Federer et al all took their quest for enduring fitness to the absolute extreme. Maybe they weren’t as new age as Djokovic, though this is interesting in itself, as Hodgkinson notes, given that Djokovic comes from a Communist-era background where original thinking was discouraged. Hodgkinson also records that the European Association of Archaeologists had dismissed the theories about the pyramid water as a “cruel hoax”.

Maybe that just doesn’t matter, as Hodgkinson then quotes Chris Evert saying that: “When Novak walks out on the court, he knows he’s mentally and emotionally superior to any opponent.”

The problem occurs when that is no longer the case. Djokovic has been losing early round matches this year to the kind of lower-ranked players that would never have touched him before. The fear of Djokovic in rival players, or rather the idea that he is untouchable, is no longer so deeply embedded. When does that reality seep into Djokovic’s mind, so that he ceases to be any longer the mental, emotional giant that Evert describes?

These are issues — maybe I am not what I used to be any more — that will be confronted by all of us at some point, except most of us don’t have to do so from the elevated and public position of these age-defying tennis players.

At 39, Cavendish is another who is defying what is normal for an athlete near the end of their career

DAVID PINTENS/ALAMY

This past week seems to have been a study of that confrontation. Mark Cavendish winning a record-breaking Tour stage, aged 39. Cristiano Ronaldo trying so desperately to score in Germany, at the same age. Jimmy Anderson plays his final Test next week while this week he took seven for 35 for Lancashire in a match — and he’s 41.

All of this is far, far from normal. To get to play Djokovic, Kopriva had to come through qualifying. In the last round of the qualifying event he had beaten Richard Gasquet. Yes, that Richard Gasquet, he of the Mona Lisa backhand and the two Wimbledon semi-finals, the last of which was nine years ago. Gasquet is 38. This struggle of his to hang on in there, that is what is normal.

And so we must treasure Djokovic at Wimbledon, the last of those men standing here, still doing the abnormal, that flame still flickering.

In the BBC’s tear-jerker tribute to Murray, Federer asks the question: “Are you proud of how you played the game?” He asks it rhetorically, because we can all apply the answer.

How all four of you played the game. How you left the game. We can all apply the answer.