The guests were halfway through dessert when Rafael Nadal and a dozen members of his family arrived in the early hours of Monday for the Champions' Dinner, which was scheduled to take place on Sunday evening. The boisterous Nadal clan were treated to the full four courses, which was only fair considering how the 22-year-old had just sated sporting appetites in a Wimbledon final that is being called the “Match of a Generation”.

Tennis continues to reverberate after a men's singles final that carried the sport to previously untouched heights. His five-set, near five-hour triumph over Roger Federer offers Nadal - the first Spaniard to win five grand-slam singles titles - the prospect of overhauling the Swiss at the top of the rankings by the autumn. Some would say that statistics are bunk and that Nadal is there already. There has never been a better player who has not reached No1.

Across the globe, reaction to the manner of the championship decider was a mixture of disbelief, joy, thankfulness for having been able to witness it and a respect for its two protagonists, which should dissuade Federer from carrying out any of the darker thoughts that crossed his mind in its aftermath. Yet, how the world No 1 responds to his first defeat in a Wimbledon final, his first on grass after 65 successive wins on the surface and the impression that Nadal haunts many of his waking moments, will determine his mental shape between now and the Olympic Games of 2012 in London.

He has said that he will not take this lying down. Nor should he. He has asked that this year be judged once the US Open is completed, so the least we can do is defer judgment until September. Until then Federer, who has been stuck on 12 grand-slam titles since his victory at Flushing Meadows last year, has a sackload of ranking points to defend, having triumphed in one and reached the final of the second of the two hard-court Masters Series events in North America that are staged before the US Open. Then there is the small matter of next month's Olympics in Beijing, where anything but gold would be another shattering reverse. Nadal will be breathing down his neck all the way.

As is his wont, after laying his head on a pillow a little after 3am yesterday, the new champion was on his way to the airport for a 9am flight to Stuttgart to inform the tournament directorship at the Mercedes Cup firsthand that he was too exhausted to give of his best in an event in which he is the reigning champion. How many other players would have simply sent a sicknote?

When he arrived home in Majorca late last night, there was time to reply to the text messages he had received after his shattering triumph, a 24th consecutive singles win since his defeat by Juan Carlos Ferrero in the second round of the BNL d'Italia Masters in Rome, where his feet were heavily blistered. Before then, remember, Nadal had won the Monte Carlo Masters in Barcelona. After that defeat, he won the Hamburg Masters and, for a fourth consecutive time, the French Open.

In Monte Carlo, Hamburg and Paris, Federer was vanquished in the finals and trails Nadal 12-6 in their personal duels. Federer won the title in Halle, Germany, on grass without dropping a set, but Nadal defeated Ivo Karlovic, Andy Roddick and Novak Djokovic on his way to the singles crown at the Artois Championships, the kind of tests that stood him in good stead for SW19.

The improvement in Nadal's game is perhaps best illustrated by the success on his serve, which was once written off as having too little power and too much powder. At Queen's Club, he held 59 of 63 service games; at Wimbledon, it was 118 of 123.

And so to the hard courts, on which, historically, Nadal has suffered a decline after the clay and grass-court seasons. Federer has a 545-point lead in the rankings and in two weeks that will be extended to 770 when the Spaniard loses his points from the 2007 Stuttgart title. On August 11 and the next ranking issue, Federer will drop 350 points from last year's Masters Series event in Canada to Nadal's 225. Where the shift may come is the next week, when the Swiss forfeits 500 points from last year's event in Cincinnati, while Nadal has only five points to lose. Could there be a new No1 by the time the US Open starts?

“If I meet Roger on hard courts, it's going to be very good news because we can meet only in the finals,” Nadal, who spoke of his admiration for Federer, said. But good news for whom?

Tease Nadal and you discover that it rankles with him that he has spent the past three years as second on the bill. This year he has won seven titles to Federer's two and those, in Estoril and Halle, are hardly of the top-notch variety. Djokovic, the world No3 from Serbia, watched the final while on holiday in Italy, during which he sent a text to Benito Perez-Barbadillo, his PR manager, who does the same job for Nadal. “I still have a lot to learn,” it read.

One would hope that finals such as this would have an effect on the game in this country. Worryingly, data from British Market Research Bureau shows that the number of young Britons playing tennis continues to fall. In a survey of 6,000 11 to 19-year-olds, only 5 per cent have played tennis on a weekly basis in 2008, down from 12 per cent in 1998. And there is a distinct North-South divide: in the South West, 8 per cent play weekly, compared with only 4 per cent in the North of England and 2 per cent in Yorkshire and Humberside.

If there is a Nadal out there, please flex your muscles.