Wimbledon: Novak Djokovic threw himself on to his back in blind ecstasy, before kneeling down to kiss the Centre Court turf, his mind a blur of emotions and full of memories about a little kid battering a tennis ball around in a Belgrade war zone all those years ago.
"Definitely one of the most important days of my life, you remember all your career, all your childhood, everything you worked for that now comes true," he said, and who could blame him after two of his life's ambitions had been realised in one glorious moment — a place in the Wimbledon men's singles final and his accession to the honoured position of being the world's No 1 tennis player?
Yet, even amid all his whirling happiness following his magnificent triumph over France's Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Djokovic understood his joy would count for nothing if he does not underline his new pre-eminence by winning Sunday's final against Rafael Nadal, the man he now succeeds atop the rankings.
"Of course, for the No 1 spot to really mean something, I have to now win the title," he said. "It's something I've always dreamed of."
Frankly, there looks not a single danger of him being deflected in this ambition now because, with perfect timing after a slightly uneven tournament by his ground-breaking 2011 standards, Djokovic chose a devastating moment to remind us why he is the first man other than Roger Federer or Nadal in the past seven years to sit atop the tennis world.
Even given Nadal's unquestioned greatness, again evident in his pummelling of Andy Murray, it still feels as if Djokovic is now the man to beat.
Here, he looked every inch the colossus who has this year looked the only player ever truly to have found Nadal's measure, defeating the Spaniard four times in succession, including twice on his favourite clay surface.
Tsonga threw everything at Djokovic, refused to lie down even when being outplayed and offered up moments of wizardly resistance but, unlike Federer who buckled under the 12th seed's all-or-nothing comeback assault, there never really felt like a moment that the Serb was not in command of his destiny.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, 2011
