Nadal took 106 minutes, lightning fast for a match at that stage of a Grand Slam. Djokovic versus Pouille lasted only 83 minutes, with Djokovic riding his precision groundstrokes and feline quickness to the win.

“A perfect match for me,” Djokovic described it. “From the first to the last point.”

He looked calmly self-assured as he said this — nothing like the doubtful athlete who struggled through a nasty elbow injury and upset losses in Melbourne in 2017 and 2018, during the one confounding low period in his career. His performance on Friday had a transcendent quality, he said, and he called such a feeling “divine” and “in the zone, where everything flows so effortlessly and you are executing everything you are intending to execute.”

He added that the semifinal was one of the best matches he had played on the sea blue center court at Rod Laver Arena.

That’s saying a lot.

He was speaking, after all, of the court on which he will soon be aiming for a record seventh Australian Open title; of the court on which he won the first of his 14 major titles, when he beat another French player, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, in 2008.

It is also the court where he played one of the most stirring, and still the longest, Grand Slam finals in tennis history: the 5-hour-53-minute war of wills he won against Nadal in 2012, one of the greatest matches ever played, after which both players struggled to stay upright at the trophy ceremony.