Serbia's Novak Djokovic crushed Nikolay Davydenko 6-1 7-5 to win the Masters Cup Sunday, underlining his credentials as a major challenger to Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer at the top of men's tennis.
The Australian Open champion, who lost all his matches without winning a set on his debut at the season-ending shootout last year, earned $1.24 million to move to within 10 ranking points of world number two Federer.
Novak Djokovic was the focus of the tennis world at the beginning of this year when, at the age of 20, he won the Australian Open, defeating Roger Federer, then the No1, in the semi-finals.
The young Serb's progress has slowed a shade since, although he finished the year as he began by winning the season-ending Tennis Masters Cup with a 6-1,7-5 victory over Nikolay Davydenko, the Russian who knocked out Andy Murray in the semi-finals.
Djokovic came close to claiming the World No2 spot during the French Open from Spain's Rafa Nadal. This week he was much closer to capturing that position from Federer, and will begin next season just 10 points behind the Swiss. Indeed had Djokovic won his final round-robin match against France's Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, then Federer would already have been relegated to World No3, which when the year began would have been inconceivable.
Serbian tennis has had a good year with Jelena Jankovic the number one woman and Nenad Zimonjic teaming up with Belgrade-born Canadian Daniel Nestor on Sunday to win the Masters Cup and take the number one spot in doubles.
"I think Serbia’s getting used to number one so I’ll have to work on that, I guess,” joked Djokovic. “Probably the fact that we didn’t have the best possible conditions gave us more motivation to succeed."
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