TIPPING POINT:Novak Djokovic's transformation from joker to king shows that sport's inherent drama should be gripping enough

NOVAK DJOKOVIC has a nickname: “The Djoker”. It could be worse. Just ask Colin Montgomerie if he’d like to swap “Mrs Doubtfire” for it. Or Sepp “Bellend” Blatter, as the Fifa president was described by a grateful, if too-trusting-in-Wikipedia South African government following the last World Cup.

Apparently Djokovic fancies himself as a comedian. He performs impressions of other tennis notables and is a highlight during those toe-curlingly embarrassing moments when the world’s best players feel the need to entertain their public with something other than tennis.

Since tennis audiences have been known to clap along to Cliff Richard, the bar is not set high. But most players somehow manage to limbo comfortably underneath when it comes to anything not involving hitting the leather off a small yellow ball.

That often produces a nostalgia for those who enjoyed tennis’ supposed golden era, that time of wooden rackets, side-burns and budgie-smuggler shorts, when Ilie Nastase could pass muster as a world-class player instead of being carted off for psychiatric assessment. Apparently there were “characters” then, even though character, as manifested through the likes of McEnroe and Connors, often culminated in embarrassing displays of foul-mouthed petulance.

There remains a sense in tennis, though, that the game isn’t enough: that to keep punters’ attention its main players should indulge in the odd gurning pantomime routine of old. Maybe that’s where Djokovic’s comedic impulses come from, although a Serb playing things for laughs is hardly guaranteed to get them rocking in the aisles anywhere outside downtown Belgrade.

Djoky’s saving grace, though, is that he has proven himself a quite remarkable tennis talent, maybe the sporting success story of this year so far. Unbeaten in 26 matches, and winner of the Australian Open, as well as titles at Indian Wells and Miami, he has usurped Roger Federer as the world’s number two ranked player and Rafa Nadal admits it is only a matter of time before Djokovic reaches the top spot. If he manages it, he will have hit number one despite playing at the same time as possibly the two greatest players ever. How remarkable a sporting story is that?

However, it has been a quite remarkable story for tennis throughout the last decade, with Federer often verging towards art, such is his virtuosity, and Nadal proving a perfect blood-and-guts foil to the cerebral maestro. Anyone needing pantomime on top of that is a prince among ingrates.

It has also confirmed this corner’s view that – embarrassing musical values aside – tennis can represent sport at its purest, like boxing in its “mano-a-mano” intensity, but with less gore and a nicer speaking voice.

Suburban roots lend tennis its reputation for gentility, but anyone with even just a nodding acquaintance with the game realises it is a supreme test of physical fitness and, most importantly, an exercise in vicious psychology.

“It’s one-on-one out there, man,” Pete Sampras once explained. “There’s no hiding – I can’t pass the ball.”

The words might be different to Joe Louis’ riff about running and hiding but the spirit is the same. Players in the world’s top-50 can be relied upon to have all the technical gifts required to reach such a status and even the most ungifted can attain prime physical fitness. Ultimately then, as with all top-level sport, the real challenge is mental.

I still maintain the ballsiest single piece of action in a sports arena I’ve ever seen came in the 2008 Wimbledon final when Federer was championship point down against Nadal and sent a screaming winner down the line while standing somewhere near Wimbledon High Street.

Attitude, at least of the real kind, and not the “look at me-look at me” stuff, is the only way to explain how someone like the diminutive Spaniard David Ferrer can still thrive in a sport increasingly dominated by more altitudinous colleagues.

And no one ever accused the former world number one Thomas Muster of any kind of visual aesthetic. Compared to many more naturally talented players, the Austrian was defiantly meat and two veg. But it was raw grit and determination that got him back from being run over by a drunk driver to winning a French Open in 1995.

But lurking underneath tennis’ twin-set surface has always been a competitiveness that can make some pugs look half-hearted. Billie Jean King revolutionised the women’s game in so many ways, but also came to the conclusion that the best way to beat her more buxom opponents was to keep forcing them to play backhand volleys. Now that’s forensic analysis.

And anyone dismissing the women’s game as an extensive fashion shoot should look at replays of a recent Miami final when Victoria Azarenka of Belarus beat Maria Sharapova.

Admittedly it can be hard to concentrate since both women achieve a pitch of shrieking volume that might be gratifying if one had the wondrous Sharapova to oneself in a thinly-walled house full of one’s mates, but it actually takes away from the purely athletic prowess on show.

However, that’s the point the tennis authorities should never allow themselves to be distracted from: there’s no need for panto. The game itself provides more than sufficient drama of the real kind. Anyone watching Federer play Nadal, and still feeling a lack, really should be watching something else.

Other sports can exhibit a similar lack of self-confidence. There are still GAA fans out there who reckon their games have a marketing problem despite the obvious evidence from the last couple of decades that hurling and football’s popularity levels have never been higher. And when racecourses advertise, they usually concentrate on everything bar the horses. There’s no need for it. People turn up for the sport, not the beer and dip.

It’s probably no coincidence that “the Djoker” is fulfilling the obvious potential of a few years ago now he is cutting out the play-acting and attacking the game with a focus that could have been lacking in the past. And it is remarkable how success can correspond to unpopularity among rivals.

Apparently far from being the Mr Chuckles of the locker-room, Djokovic is not widely popular among his peers. Some of them reportedly have taken exception to his impressions of them. As with all sport, though, what really stings the most is defeat.