At the start of the Dawson and Downey trial on ‘A Few Good Men’, Captain Jack Ross sums up his opening remarks with the phrase, “those are the facts, and they are indisputable.”

With that in mind, here are the facts from the Nadal v Djokovic Wimbledon final:

1. If you had asked anyone who knew anything about tennis before the match the question, “what do you think is going to happen if Rafael Nadal serves bombs and serves at 80% for the first two sets”, the last answer they would’ve given would have been, “Djoko will be sitting on his chair at the end of the second set with a 6-4 6-1 lead and be thoroughly gutting Nadal like he’s a helpless fish.”

2.  Nadal didn’t play badly for the first two sets … really, he didn’t play badly at all. The difference was that early on you could see that he felt he had to bring something a little extra special to beat Djokovic whereas Djokovic could just be himself and that would be enough. Djoko does to Nadal what Nadal does to everyone else – he makes you uncomfortable and forces you to pull the trigger a ball or two earlier than you feel comfortable on. Nadal felt he had to take his forehand up the line the whole time as Djokovic showed him over the course of their four previous meetings this year that just nailing his forehand crosscourt didn’t bother him at all. Playing those huge forehands up the line is something Rafa does as well as anyone, but against virtually everyone else, he can choose to do it when he wants, but against Djokovic, Novak is in charge of this exchange.

3. When Djokovic is stretched, it’s not a problem for him. In fact, when he’s in trouble and doesn’t counter with some frozen rope backhand crosscourt or precise forehand, it’s a surprise. Nadal couldn’t take advantage of these situations the same way Djokovic could take charge when he would force Nadal into an uncomfortable position on his backhand and Rafa would have to resort to the choppy floaty slice he hits. Simply put, Djokovic is the best defender not just because he can run down anything, but because of what he does wih the shot from those impossible situations. He turns getting punched in the face defence into stone cold offence better than anyone in tennis.

4. I was really surprised Nadal didn’t use the tactic of nailing backhands hard and down the middle. If Nadal hits his backhand down the line then it’s easy for Djoko to hit one into Nadal’s backhand corner. If Nadal hits a backhand crosscourt, Novak can smoke a forehand crosscourt and pressure Nadal’s backhand. But, if Nadal plays hard and up the middle he gives Djokovic no natural angle to force a ball into his backhand and it becomes easier as well for Nadal to move around the backhand and dictate the point with his forehand.

5. After Djokovic’s body got invaded by Sam Worthington’s Avatar creature in the third set, Nadal had the momentum he needed heading into the fourth. If he had taken advantage of his break point in the first game of the fourth set then I might be sitting here now writing about some five set epic. But, once again his crappy chop slice return of serve cost him on that point as it allowed Djokovic to take charge of the point and dominate with his forehand. Up until this point, Djokovic had stayed calm through the third, but if Rafa breaks him there and really starts to believe and generally get, “I’m about to storm a beachhead under heavy fire” level fired up, anything could have happened.

6. Djokovic’s display of tennis from around 3-3 in the first set until the end of the second set was up there with Edberg chopping up Courier in the 1991 US Open final, Sampras’ undressing of Agassi at Wimbledon in 1999, Safin taking down Pete at the US Open in 2000, Federer’s disembowlment of Hewitt in the 2004 US Open final and his humiliation of Roddick in Australia in 2007 and Nadal’s own mauling of Federer at the French Open in 2008 as some of the best tennis I’ve ever seen on a big stage against a world class opponent. At that moment, he was simply untouchable and experienced his true defining moment as a champion. You don’t need to analyse it because it’s not like Nadal handed it to him. Nadal made very few unforced errors, Djokovic just got hotter than a volcano and had too much game. Before that, he was a two-time grand slam champion and world number one in waiting, but his remarkable year still wouldn’t have been complete without winning one of the last two slams. He was like the guy on ‘The Deaprted’ who Billy Costigan hits in the bar. After Billy hits the guy, Mr French grabs Billy and tells him, ” I’m the guy that tells you there are guys you can hit and there’s guys you can’t. Now, that’s not quite a guy you can’t hit, but it’s almost a guy you can’t hit. So I’m gonna make a f§$%&/’ ruling on this right now. You don’t f”§$%&’ hit him. You understand?”.

Translation: you can’t hit Djokovic anymore. He’s a made man.

7. His loss to Federer at the French Open was Federer’s version of Billy Chapel on ‘For Love of the Game’ having one last great day in the sun and throwing a no-hitter at Yankee Stadium rather than a return to the Federer/Nadal duopoly. Although good luck telling Federer this. Nadal on the other hand …

8. Rafael Nadal is a realist. Heading into the French he knew at that moment Djokovic was the better player. He’s now lost five times in a row to him and has lost – including the last two sets in Miami – 9 of his last 10 sets to Djokovic. And today, it’s not like you could say, well he didn’t serve well or it was windy or whatever … What he does to counter Djokovic apart from hoping Novak goes back to Belgrade, drinks too much absynth and gets locked in an opium den and misses the rest of the year, I have no idea. Novak Djokovic is just right now, a better tennis player. He has zero weaknesses. Apart from playing him in an arena like Federer got him in in Paris with the Parisian crowd more fired up and hungry for a Federer win than the French crowd in ‘Victory’ when the Allies played the Nazis in soccer (although it is possible the crowd wasn’t that fired up at the start because they 1) thought any clapping/cheering etc would earn them a trip to the local Gestapo office 2) they realised Michael Caine was playing for the Allies 3) they saw Sylvester Stallone was the goalie and didn’t know how to defend corner kicks 4) they knew the referee was a cheat and 5) they saw that all the Allied reserves were malnourished slaves from Eastern Europe who couldn’t walk let alone run a mile on their own and the Nazis would naturally try and take out Pele’s legs the first chance they got which would mean it would be an 11 on 10 game in which case the Allies would have no chance. Wrong!) and Djokovic lets it get under his skin mentally there is not one area in which you could fault him or say he is a little shaky in. Volleying? Did you see some of those raids into the net which resulted in beautiful angled vollyes never mind his serve and volley at 5-3 30-30 in the fourth set. Forehand? Not anymore. Serve? You’re kidding yourself. He’s the total package.

I’m going to wrap things up with this which I can’t prove but have wondered whether it might be true for a while:

After retiring – he was the defending champion at the time – due to the heat in the Australian Open qtrs in 2009 against Andy Roddick, Djokovic and his team decided it was time to conquer his conditioning issues. He hired an Austrian who used to work with Thomas Muster – not 100% sure if he’s Austrian – to be his fitness coach. Rafa Nadal won the 2009 Australian Open and at that time was the undisputed king of tennis. While Federer was still a factor, it was clear Nadal was going to be the mountain Djokovic would have to conquer again and again on all surfaces if he was going to be the champion he said he wanted to be. And in case you have been trapped under a rock since 2005, Rafa Nadal is a physical beast. Even though his serve was about to be kidnapped by Todd Martin, Djokovic was already a well rounded player. I wonder if he looked at Nadal and just thought, this is the guy I am going to have to take down on big stages time and time again and I’m not going to do it unless I can keep up my gymnastics like retrieiving and counter attacking routine up longer than he can. I wonder if he didn’t just plan to improve his all around physical conditioning, but I wonder if he did it with Nadal in mind.

(Maybe this is also what Nadal did in 2006 after Federer beat him at Wimbledon with regards to his game? “If I’m going to win this tournament in the near future, Roger is the guy I have to beat and this is what I need to do to beat him on grass.” I don’t know whether Nadal did this but one suspects he did.)

Djokovic and everyone knew how Nadal played. He knew he’s not going to change so to counter it and to beat the best, this is what I need to do. I wonder if he had a picture of Nadal on his mirror like Rocky Balboa had of Ivan Drago when he was running up 20,000 snow covered mountains in Siberia and just said to himself, if I’m gonna beat this guy over five sets and do it again and again then I have to become an even better physical specimen than he is.

Never in a million years would I think someone would be better physically than Nadal – but Djokovic is. He stared him down on a hot day in Miami and was the stronger at the end of the match. He took care of him via gruelling slugfests on the dirt and now used his absolutely freakish movement to his advantage on the grass.

His backhand has always been great. His serve and forehand and mental state have improved out of sight but it’s his gumby like movement abilities and fear he puts into the opponents with his athleticism that ought to make people sit up and take notice.

He’s approximately 954 and 1 for the season and now, he gets to head to the North American hardcourts – a surface on which his game has always thrived.

By the time the US Open ends, it’s going to take a braver man than me to bet against him being 985 and 1.