Novak Djokovic has prepared his way. So has Rafael Nadal.

WIMBLEDON, England While the French Open has long been Rafael Nadal time, Wimbledon has become Novak Djokovic time.

He is not yet the greatest grass court player of this Darwinian era in men’s tennis. Roger Federer, 40, absent from this year’s tournament, still gets that nod with his eight singles titles at the All England Club. But Djokovic, who in his youth posed with a homemade replica of the winner’s trophy, has certainly been the best in recent years with his acrobatic, clean-lined style, and he is arguably the greatest grass fielder in the men’s field as the Wimbledon main draw kicks off on Monday.

It’s hard not to make Novak the priceless favorite, said Paul Annacone, one of Federer’s former coaches. People talk about preparation and lack of matches and things like that, but when you’ve played Wimbledon so many times and been there so many times at the end, I don’t think it matters at all.

Bjorn Borg, the Swede with the stone face, broke the mold while preparing for Wimbledon, winning the event five times in a row from 1976 to 1980 without playing an official warm-up tournament on grass. But the mold was repaired and reused for nearly 30 years before Djokovic broke it again, perhaps for good.

He has won five of his six 2011 Wimbledon titles, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2019 and 2021 without playing a tuneup event on tour and will aim to do the same this year when he tries to win Wimbledon for the fourth time in a row.

Every day that you rest and reset a little helps, Djokovic said. But then they were all different.

Speaking of grass courts, he added: I didn’t have too many issues to quickly adapt to the surface. Over the years I’ve learned how to play more efficiently on the surface. At the beginning of my career I still struggled with moving and sliding.

Djokovic, who will face South Korea’s unseeded Kwon Soon-woo on Center Court Monday, has not played an official game since his draining, frankly puzzling loss to Nadal in a quarter-final of the French Open. Djokovic had seemingly weathered the storm from Nadal’s thunderous start, but failed to maintain his momentum and later blew a lead in the fourth and final set.

He spent some free time with his wife, Jelena, and two young children before arriving in London to play and play very well at the Hurlingham Club’s exhibition grass track event last week.

Nadal followed the same pattern, racing against the clock to recover from a radiofrequency ablation, which kills nerves through the use of radio waves, to treat a left foot injury before not playing as convincingly at Hurlingham. Unlike his arch-rival Djokovic, Nadal has never won Wimbledon without an official start-up tournament on grass. His two titles, in 2008 and 2010, came after joining Queens Club, and unlike Djokovic, Nadal has not played at Wimbledon since 2019.

The tournament was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic and last year Nadal skipped it due to the chronic foot problem that remained his concern throughout his intermittently stunning 2022 campaign. He has won the first two stages of the Grand Slam: the Australian Open in January and then the French Open this month, despite having to take pain-killing injections to numb his left foot for all seven rounds in Paris.

But he said Saturday that the radiofrequency treatment had eased his daily pain and given him the freedom to aggressively push off his left foot, and there certainly seemed to be a spring in his step and an urgency to his state of mind as he practiced over the weekend in the All England Club.

First of all, I can walk normally most days, almost every day, he said. That is the main problem for me. When I wake up, I don’t have the pain I’ve had for the past year and a half, so I’m pretty happy about that.

Beware, world, but even though Nadal has moved mountains in 2022, it will still be an uphill battle to rise to Djokovics level on grass.

They can only meet in the final as the top two places in the tournament, with the absence of the best Daniil Medvedev and the second-placed Alexander Zverev. Medvedev, a Russian, is one of the players banned from Wimbledon this year because of the war in Ukraine. Zverev, a German, tore ligaments in his right ankle in his semifinal loss to Nadal at the French Open on June 3.

But there are still clear, major threats to a Djokovic-Nadal rematch, which would be a tenth Open Era men’s duel in a Grand Slam final.

Hubert Hurkacz, an amiable Pole who upset Federer in the quarter-finals last year, is a grass-field wiz and assaulted Medvedev this month to win the title in Germany’s Halle. He is halfway through the draw for Djokovics at Wimbledon. Matteo Berrettini, the mighty Italian who lost to Djokovic in last year’s Wimbledon final and just won the tuneup events on grass in Stuttgart, Germany, and at Queens Club, is halfway behind Nadals.

But Nadal, who will face Francisco Cerundolo, an unseeded Argentine, in the first round on Tuesday, could face a big early test if he faces Sam Querrey of the United States in the second round.

Querrey’s ranking has fallen but he remains dangerous on grass and is the last man to beat Djokovic in a completed match at Wimbledon, leaving him upset in the third round in 2016 as Djokovic started a downward spiral that would last nearly two years .

Djokovic is in another difficult phase, partly due to his own fault, as he, unlike all other top men’s tennis players, has refused to be vaccinated against Covid-19. That led to his deportation from Australia in January ahead of the Australian Open and could keep him out of the US Open later this year unless the United States lifts its ban on unvaccinated foreigners.

Of course, I am aware of that, said Djokovic. That is an extra motivation to do well here. Hopefully I can have a very good tournament, as I have done in the last three editions. Then I’ll just have to wait. I would like to go to the States, but as of today that is not possible.

He played just 21 games in 2022, fourteen fewer than he had played at the same stadium last season. But grass, once the primary surface for professional tennis, is now an afterthought and an acquired taste. Djokovic, who liked to chew on a blade of grass from Center Court after his Wimbledon titles, has clearly acquired it.

As the best player in men’s tennis, he can still break the serve on a surface preferred by the server. As the most flexible player in men’s tennis, he can bend into a variety of positions to take the lower bounce on grass. He can also close the baseline and keep opponents off balance by serving and volleying on big points.

It’s a rough recipe, Annacone said. And while we’re talking about how much he dominates on hard courts, his win rate is actually higher on grass.

That’s true: his singles win rate is 84 percent on hard courts, slightly lower than his 85 percent on grass.

Now, in a bleak season, it’s time for the rightful Wimbledon favorite to try and widen that gap and narrow the gap with Nadal, who has 22 Grand Slam singles titles, to Djokovic’s 20.