TENNIS US OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP:THERE ARE only two players in tennis who can stop Rafael Nadal establishing himself as better than anyone who has played the game. One of them is Roger Federer, who left New York incrementally diminished. The other has lived in Mallorca for 24 years, and has won nine grand slams, seven fewer than his 29-year-old friend and rival, the latest of them his first US Open won in a tremendous final against Novak Djokovic on Monday night.

Tennis is blessed to have such giants moving among us at the same time, players of dignity and sublime gifts.

If there is a humbler champion in sport than Nadal he has yet to announce himself to the wider world.

“I am not a genius,” Nadal said after beating the Serb 6-4, 5-7, 6-4, 6-2 to secure his career grand slam and thus the world number one player becomes the seventh man to achieve the feat – and the third youngest behind Rod Laver and Don Budge.

That’s “not a genius” as in Ali was not a boxer, Van Gogh couldn’t paint and Mozart wrote jingles.

It was not flawless, but it was irresistible. Nadal soon discovered that Djokovic had come to fight as the Serb chased every scrap, converting three of the four breaks that came his way.

Nadal, in stark contrast, let 23 of 26 chances to break go begging, and had to serve his way out of some tricky passages before wearing Djokovic down in a withering last set of extended, sometimes brilliant, rallies.

It was the sort of grinding tennis for which Federer is known. However, Federer’s enemy now is time. He may add to his 16 slams but, like Pete Sampras at a similar age, is looking more vulnerable by the month.

There is no escaping the truth that the final New York and tennis craved was Federer-Nadal, to see if the prince could surpass the king on his own surface.

That it did not happen was not Nadal’s fault. For the third slam of the summer, Federer fell short of his target.

Nadal, meanwhile, has two enemies: his knees, which are riven by tendinitis.

Remarkably, they are holding up. He does not complain about them, but he quietly hopes they do not collapse.

Djokovic, who beat Federer here on Saturday but could not cope with the serve or verve of Nadal in a final interrupted for an hour and 48 minutes by rain, is uniquely placed to judge where they stand now and in tennis history. He leans towards Nadal.

“He has the capabilities already to become the best player ever,” he said.

“We cannot judge who is better on one tournament. Federer has had five, six more years on the tour, more success, more trophies. He has definitely made history in this sport, and he’s still one of the best players in the world.

“On the other hand, Nadal is just proving each day, each year that he’s getting better. He’s so mentally strong and dedicated. If he physically holds out the next five, six, seven years – I don’t know how long he’s going to play – he has the game now for each surface, and he has won each major. He has proven to the world that he’s the best in this moment.”

Nadal, as ever, accepted the praise with a boyish smile and, in halting English that only enhances his charm, he said: “I think for the first time in my career I played a very, very good match in this tournament.

“I played my best match in the US Open at the most important moment, so I am very, very happy for that.

“For me it’s a dream to have the career Grand Slam but it’s even more of a dream to have won the US Open,” he said.

“It’s an unbelievable feeling because I have worked hard all my life in some difficult periods to be here but I never imagined having all four grand slams.”

He was even reluctant to concede he is getting better. “I think I improved my tennis a little bit, but is not a radical change, no?”

Plainly that depends on your vantage point.

The press box was unanimous in its praise of Nadal’s achievement and the way he went about it.

Djokovic – who can rarely have played better when losing – recognised that the player across the net from him had reinvented himself yet again, the true mark of genius, by swivelling his iron left wrist a few millimetres on the racket to ratchet his serve up by 12 miles an hour and cut a subtle, brutal swathe through a tournament that left everyone gasping in the heat, wind and rain the past fortnight.

“He’s playing the best tennis that I’ve ever seen him play on hard courts.

“He has improved his serve drastically . . . the speed, the accuracy and of course his baseline [play] is as good as ever.

“I was playing really well for most of the match but there were moments in the third and fourth set where I dropped my focus. He took it away and never gave me a chance to get it back.”

For three-quarters of the match Djokovic was Nadal’s equal. He was the first to take a set off him in the tournament.

But, in the championship rounds, as the latter stages of a boxing match are called, Nadal beat him up.

Djokovic could not beat history: in 107 grand slam matches in which he had taken the first set, Nadal had gone on to win 106 times. That is what champions are made of: ruthlessness.

On the inevitable comparisons with Federer Nadal insisted that he still had some way to go before being regarded as better than the Swiss ace, adding: “I think talk about if I am better or worse than Roger is stupid, because the titles say he’s much better than me. I think that will be true all my life.

“For me Roger was always an example, especially because he has improved his tennis throughout his career, and that’s a good thing that you can copy.

“So I try to do this. I know Roger and me are different, much different styles.

“And I don’t think it’s right to talk about me being better because I don’t think that.”

Guardian Service