** ****by **Tom Scocca**Photograph by **Peggy Sirota

Before we talk about Novak Djokovic, the best tennis player alive, let’s take a minute to talk about the other guy. Pick a guy. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, for instance. In the Wimbledon semifinals, July 1. It’s as good an illustration as any of what happened this year in the sport, which is to say that it is simultaneously astonishing and inadequate. Officially, at this moment, Novak Djokovic was the No. 2 tennis player in the world. Tsonga was No. 19 but on a roll, having just beaten Roger Federer.

So it’s the third set, Djokovic having won the first two. Tsonga delivers a nasty, hard serve, but Djokovic handles it, a sharp return from the left baseline. On the next exchange, Djokovic hits it gently, pulling Tsonga to the net. Then he sends Tsonga the other way, for a retreating over-the-shoulder backhand. Tsonga’s been up and back, and Djokovic hasn’t stirred from the baseline. A few hard baseline shots later: Djokovic moves up for a passing shot, and Tsonga lunges to fight it off, falling to the grass as he dumps it softly crosscourt—where Djokovic, sprawling to the court himself, sends it back. Tsonga, only half-risen, slashes at it and hits it long.

A few measly inches, and Tsonga would have had it. Could have had it. The rally was a magnificent display of daring and agility: the shift from power to guile and back again, the final flurry that put both men on the ground. Tsonga even went on to win that set, before falling in the fourth.

But fall he did. Djokovic scattered points and matches like that behind him all year long. It took another three days, and the final against Rafael Nadal, to elevate Djokovic to the ATP’s No. 1 ranking. By then, however, the ATP’s calculations were merely catching up to what was already true: Suddenly, amazingly, in 2011, Novak Djokovic became the most powerful force in tennis.

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Tennis was not expecting this, a year ago. Tennis did not see the need. Tennis already had written the script, and it was a perfectly satisfactory one, if you liked tennis. There, in the near court, was Roger Federer, the most wonderful and successful player anyone had ever seen, slowly beginning his natural decline as he entered his 30s. Across the net was Rafael Nadal, possibly—debatably!—superior even to Federer. Certainly younger, in his mid-20s; sleek and powerful like a Grecian statue, or a tawny replica of a Grecian statue made of expensive Iberian ham.