Graphic: Serving up a grand-slam triumph

No more the imitator, the player who can take off everyone else’s game so expertly. The only parody that Novak Djokovic performed yesterday was of a grand-slam tournament champion and everything about his victory in the Australian Open – the youngest man to lift the silverware since the tournament moved to a synthetic surface from the grass where it was last played in 1987, the year of his birth – was that of an authentic, striking prince of the courts.

The 20-year-old Serb lifted the crown at the expense of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the extraordinary Frenchman, who, had he been a touch less fortunate, might have been banished from these championships by Andy Murray, the British No 1, in the first round on its opening day. That match seemed a world away from the extravagance that engulfed the Rod Laver Arena last night.

On Saturday evening, the Melbourne Cricket Ground was throbbing to the latest stop on the Police tour, which drew a crowd of 35,000. It seemed as if that many people, including Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, had managed to squeeze into a place that holds a third of that number. The pulsating rhythms of the 2008 final were those generated by a couple of young men plucking and tugging at the heartstrings of those here and others, especially in Serbia and France, swaying to its every twist and turn.

And there were plenty of them before Djokovic lured Tsonga into one more off-forehand error, to celebrate his 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 victory by kissing the Plexicushion surface that had caused so much angst in the build-up to the event. Djokovic had every reason to love every centimetre of its length and breadth, for there is nothing quite like your first grand-slam title; no memory lives longer.

When you have your family there to share it, how much better could life get? Djokovic’s parents and his younger brothers have been beside him for the entire tournament; Tsonga’s parents flew into Melbourne on Saturday, for they could not stay cooped up in France, following the world No 38’s performance on television. They had to live the moment with him and how close their son came to extending his brilliance of the past fortnight to the award of the victor’s garland.

The longer this championship went on, the more exceptional Tsonga became. When he took a mighty stick on Thursday to the game of Rafael Nadal, the second seed, one wondered if he could possibly sustain those levels against Djokovic, who had a glint in his eye the moment he arrived in Australia. When Tsonga lost his first service game, knowing looks were exchanged. But the 22-year-old was not about to let an untidy start unnerve him. Indeed, with great leaps, enormous reach and clubbing forehands, he broke back immediately and went on to clinch the set with two points from the top drawer – a crunching forehand response to a Djokovic smash and a vicious, curling top-spin lob to a decent backhand volley.

Djokovic had lost the first set of his previous grand-slam final – last year’s US Open to Roger Federer, having had seven set points – but this one, his first dropped set of the tournament, was probably harder to accept. He knew that he could not allow Tsonga’s confidence to spill into full-blooded authority and it was just as well that his service returns, especially on the backhand, were getting into a groove. He broke in the seventh game and, even though Djokovic did not make any of six first serves behind that break, Tsonga’s retaliatory powers were being eroded.

As Djokovic steadily built on his command, the Frenchman became increasingly niggled at the number of bounces of the ball that his opponent was taking before unleashing his serves. It has long been part of the Serb’s singular style and, as this was the first time the pair had met, Tsonga had only heard about how it can frazzle opponents. He wondered why Carlos Ramos, the Portuguese umpire, would not intervene, but when is eight bounces acceptable and 15 not, so long as their use does not brook the spirit of the laws? Ramos, the sport’s leading official, consistently decided to err on the side of noninterference.

The No 3 seed had broken in the third game of the third set and, although he saved six set points in the ninth with a mixture of brilliant opportunism and unbreachable defence, Tsonga succumbed when a backhand down the line – the stroke that garnered Djokovic more in terms of rallying dominance than any other – forced him into a netted forehand. Could the elder of the finalists conjure yet more magic?

His chance might have come when Djokovic looked to have injured his left thigh when chasing a drop shot. But Djokovic did not appear unduly hindered, not least when he saved a break point at 5-5 in the fourth set with a reaction backhand volley. And so to a tie-break, decisive as it was, which turned on a double fault on the sixth point, only Tsonga’s second.

After 3hr 6min, the deed was done. Serbia rule. They may call him “The Djoker”, but this time, his faced wreathed in disbelief and delight, the last laugh was his.

Serving up a grand-slam triumph

Novak Djokovic was at a disadvantage when he faced the big-serving Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, of France, at Melbourne Park yesterday. However, the Serb, despite his first serve going haywire in the second and fourth sets, managed to come out on top. After failing to win points on more than half of his serves in those two sets, the strength and consistency of his second serve ensured that he was able to secure victory