What will be of even greater concern to Andy Murray and his team than the heavy defeat he suffered against Rafael Nadal in their Wimbledon quarter-final is the desperate thought that Nadal is a contemporary and, fitness permitting, is going to be out of the British No1's reach for the rest of his career.
On the evidence of this one match, the gulf between the two of them is so immense that Murray will forever be stranded on the opposite shore. To have been so thoroughly routed by Nadal would not have been quite so bad had the Spaniard been the much older man bringing a mature game to bear on a very talented 21-year-old.
But the reality is rather different. Although there is no question that Murray is very talented, he is less than a year younger than Nadal, and while his game is still a work in progress, so is Nadal's. Perhaps the most distressing, if not entirely accurate, measure of the respective speeds at which they have progressed is that when they first met at the 2007 Australian Open they engaged in an absorbing contest that the Spanish left-hander won in the fifth set.
Since then the margin between them in terms of results has grown, Nadal having won each of their three subsequent matches in straight sets and with increasing ease. The Spaniard's domination of Murray in front of a Centre Court crowd who tried unavailingly to lift him was absolute. He served better, moved better and hit the ball more cleanly, confidently and with far greater menace (with far more spin, too, but this hardly needs saying because Nadal is out on his own in this regard).
Murray did have the legitimate excuse that on Monday he took part in the longest match of the championships when he came back from two sets down to beat the eighth seed Richard Gasquet in three hours 57 minutes. The emotional and physical strain of that contest obviously took its toll.
What was disappointing, though, was that Murray appeared to have become crestfallen very early on. He tightened up and deployed none of the court craft with which he re-established control of his third-round match against Tommy Haas, the former world No2. Nor did he display the same passion he did against Gasquet, only really pumping himself up towards the end as the pressure eased with the inevitability of the result.
What Murray, with the help of his support team, has to do now is repair his confidence and convince himself that he need not always be in thrall to Nadal and his power game. There are reasons for believing he can get back at Nadal. For a start, the Spaniard has been preternaturally strong for a young man, just as Boris Becker was - and the others did eventually catch up with Becker, who won four of his six grand slam titles before he turned 22.
There is also the question of the unusual stress Nadal is putting on his body with his high-impact game (not to mention the ferocity with which he trains). While his early results have been impressive - four French titles and now a first Wimbledon title within reach - there are a number of expert observers who doubt whether his body will be able to stand it over an extended career.
Murray must bide his time, work assiduously on his game and build confidence in his ability to win the major titles. Despite what happened in his first grand-slam quarter-final, he remains unusually gifted.
For the moment, though, he will be hard to console. He did take a mighty beating.
