Novak Djokovic defeat a minor tragedy in tennis tapestry that even Roger Federer couldn't weave

As Novak Djokovic toiled around Court One on Saturday, digging himself a hole he would eventually be unable to escape, the BBC pundit Jeff Tarango, a former player who infamously quit a match at Wimbledon in 1995 in fury because he didn't agree with an umpire and was banned from the tournament a year later, continued to grapple with the insanity that unfolded before his eyes.

“Makes you wonder what made Borg tick, that he could win so many French Opens and Wimbledons," commented the American.

Except it doesn’t. And it shouldn’t. The comment was a further reminder that, inadvertently or otherwise, the enormity of what Djokovic achieved last month in Paris has entirely failed to resonate as it should have. So consumed were people either by denial or the relatively irrelevant completion of his “elusive” French Open title that the significance of Djokovic’s four straight Slam titles have not been given the importance they deserve.

One thing is for certain, regardless of how legendary Borg’s three French Open-Wimbledon doubles were, no human being has ever summoned up the audacity to compare Roger Federer’s greatest achievements to them. The past 12 months Djokovic has enjoyed rank beyond any single achievement of Federer or any male tennis player has achieved in the Open era, yet they’re treated with not even a fraction of the same respect.

The achievement of holding all four Slams is so all-encompassing and takes so much out of a player that there was always going to come a time when Djokovic finally hit a wall. No matter how superior the Serb is to the rest of the field, with well over double the points total of his second-in-command, he would eventually cross his human threshold. Djokovic’s earliest defeat at a Slam since the 2009 Australian Open is a clear testament to the significance of what he achieved in Paris.

To be precise, Djokovic’s moment of humanity came for him after an Open Era record of thirty consecutive Grand Slam victories. The greatest shock of it all wasn’t the mere fact that he lost and that he lost early, but rather that the opponent who dealt this historic defeat, whose name will gloriously ring out in all manner of trivia quizzes for years to come, was, of all the people in the galaxy, Sam Querrey.

Querrey is famed for his expertly-constructed reputation as one of, if not the prime headcase of men’s tennis to such an extent that it’s difficult to imagine that Djokovic thought of anything but victory as he fell asleep on Friday night. Down two sets, he was still heavily favoured by the bookies and anyone who had ever watched both men play tennis.

And it showed. From the second the pair arrived back to continue the rain-scuppered match as Querrey stood 7-5 6-1 up, Djokovic showed exactly how he intended to triumph. He broke Querrey in his very first service game after the restart, cuffing the American with trademark returns straight to the feet and endeavouring to move Querrey whilst putting every single ball into difficult positions around the court. Querrey held the Serb at bay, but even that wasn’t enough to stop the early discipline Djokovic arrived on-court with.

Everything about the match recalled Djokovic’s comeback from two sets down just one year ago against Kevin Anderson. The court was the same, the style of his opponents identical and the result seemed destined to head that way. But despite Djokovic’s clear and coherent intentions, for once he simply didn’t have the ability to execute.

After arriving in the match full of vitality and intent, the Serb confusingly threw in a series of errors at *5-1 to lose one of his breaks. As he searched for and failed to convert an astounding 11 of 12 break points throughout the fourth set, for some bizarre reason his serving was so poor that he won only 69% of first serve points against one of the worst returners in the world whilst playing on grass. When he somehow found himself serving for the fourth set, he self-destructed and failed to take the match to a final showdown. All entirely inexplicable errors, yet simultaneously logical with the context of his prior achievements.

Querrey deserves much credit for the greatest victory he will ever achieve. Despite the poor, scrappy and nerve-crippled fourth set he should have won far earlier than the tiebreak, he kept his nerve when it mattered and through countless rain delays that forced him to start and start again. Each time the pair returned to court, Querrey could have returned to type. But he held his nerve just firmly enough to see out the victory.

“If you're playing somebody of as a high quality as Sam Querrey is on this surface with a big serve, anything can happen.” said Djokovic afterwards.

Not many people may be fond of the tree-sized, big servers that are increasingly scattered across the tour. But their ability to create these unpredictable situations is partly why they are so unpopular. Querrey also had to serve smartly and constantly change his patterns to keep the greatest returner in history at bay, and his decision to send his crushing deliveries out wide during the second half of the fourth set, after having much success with his serve down the service T, was one of the driving factors behind his victory.

Though one solitary result, the 2016 Wimbledon Djokovic leaves behind is entirely different to the one that existed before. Suddenly, Andy Murray is the favourite whilst Roger Federer probably spent the afternoon gleefully jumping around with his twin daughters. But their likely spots in the finals are far from certain. This could also be the significant lucky break that youngsters and slightly younger players like Nick Kyrgios, Alexander Zverev and Milos Raonic, among others, could have been searching for.

For Novak Djokovic, however, in a few days this shocking loss to Sam Querrey in the third round of Wimbledon will mean precisely nothing.