Andy Murray on his secret weapon

Andy Murray signs autographs for his growing number of fans on the eve of Sunday's Wimbledon final. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Andy Murray hopes the nation will help him beat Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon on Sunday, an endearing sentiment and one that might well come to pass. But he knows a greater truth already: like a fighter, he is in there by himself, throwing and taking the bombs alone, and, when the sun goes down, the victory, if he manages it, will be his alone, whatever the lachrymose courtside celebrations afterwards and the subsequent tidal wave of emotion that will envelop him.

As he left Court 15 on Saturday aafter hitting with his long-time friend and training partner, Dani Valverdu, his demeanour was as inscrutable as it always is before big matches but he did share a moment to reveal what he is feeling before his third grand slam final in a row against the same adversary, Novak Djokovic.

He is aware of his rise in popularity since a BBC all-access documentary recently showed a side of him most people do not see – altogether funnier and more relaxed than his on-court persona – but it is not something that concerns him.

"The only time I am seeing people is when I am on the court," he said, "but whether that is down to the documentary or what happened last year [when he won Olympic gold] I don't know really. The support has been unbelieveable at the end of the matches and that is what you need if you want to try to win these events. It would make a huge difference if the crowd are right on my side. All I care about is winning."

When asked what it has been like for those close to him the past few days, particularly his girlfriend, Kim Sears, he said: "I have no idea whether it is tougher for her or me. She is the person you would need to ask. I think it is a different sort of stress. Obviously she would like me to win but last year after the Wimbledon final, although I didn't win, it wasn't so much about that – she just wanted me to be OK. For friends and family, although they want me to win, but if not then they just want you to be OK."

It is a curiously caring way to look at success and failure in a sporting event, however grand, as if defeat will send him into a spiral of self-loathing, and what friends are more concerned about is for Murray "to be OK". They have had reason to worry in the past. When he lost to Roger Federer in the Australian Open final in 2010, his tennis fell to pieces and he declared in Miami that he "needed to start enjoying my tennis again".

It seems so long ago. He has transformed not just his game but his attitude. Like his Spanish friend, Rafael Nadal, he can look at tennis and its pressures with a wider perspective, handle setbacks better and, as a result, play more freely.

He would still like to win this final for those millions who have gradually but undeniably taken him to their hearts. On Sunday, he hopes, they will drink in the summer sun, maybe catch the final together and give him a collective cheer, from the seats on Centre Court to those on the hill outside and in front of their television sets around the country.

"When you are on the court you are obviously just in the moment, you know what is going on in the crowd, but there are so many other people out there. Loads of people just queue to watch on the hill. It is just a shame that the stadium isn't bigger."

Will nerves get to him – as they almost did before he won his breakthrough grand slam title at the US Open last year? "I definitely feel calmer today than I did on the Saturday last year. So hopefully when I get on the court tomorrow I will be a bit fresher mentally.

"Sometimes nerves and stress can take a bit out of you physically, so the calmer I can stay in the next 24 hours or so will help as well."

He confessed he did not sleep well after winning his tense semi-final against the young Polish prospect Jerzy Janowicz on Friday night. "Not particularly. It was a late finish so I will try to get a good sleep tonight."

Often he will take his dogs for a walk to get tennis out of his head during the championships. But not this Sunday morning. "I like staying at home during Wimbledon and having the dogs around is good. But I play 99% of my matches without having them around and it doesn't affect me.

"The one thing it helps with is keeping my mind off the matches, or what is going on on the TV. I won't walk the dogs in the morning. I will try to sleep as late as I can."

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Andy Murray must crush Wimbledon history as well as Novak Djokovic | Kevin Mitchell

Andy Murray with fans after a Court 15 practice session on the eve of the Wimbledon men's singles final. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Whether or not Andy Murray can break through the next level of shackles the nation has wrapped around his psyche – the 77-year wait for a Wimbledon men's champion – his final against Novak Djokovic on Sunday will almost certainly be an ordeal. We will love it. The winner will too. For the loser, the pain will be considerable, to heart and body.

The odds are overwhelmingly that this final will be similar to each of their past three battles for a grand slam title. In all four of their big clashes – the first was a relative blitz in three sets in Melbourne two years ago – they have spent nearly a thousand minutes across the net from each other, but the others, again for the Australian title in 2012 and this year, as well as the US Open last September, were the most brutal examinations of their commitment to the demands of the modern game.

Tennis did not used to be like this. It was always tough, often pretty, but never demanded that the combatants give so much to the cause. There were limits. No longer.

Djokovic's semi-final win in five sets over Juan Martín del Potro on Friday was the most graphic demonstration of that verity. It was not only the longest semi-final in the history of the tournament, it was one of the best. The level of tennis hit such a consistency of excellence that Boris Becker – previous owner of the longevity record with Andy Murray's coach Ivan Lendl – was moved to remark, "Can it get any better than this?"

The answer is: probably. It is astonishing what the best players in the world have given us in recent years, finals of such draining intensity it is tiring just watching them and there seems to be no avoiding these climaxes of quite terrible beauty.

But it is what they sign up for from a young age. Murray and Djokovic first played each other at a youth tournament in France when they were 11 years of age. Murray won. Djokovic said on Saturday (as he has said before) what he remembers most about Murray then is his curly hair. He has put considerably more relevant information into his Andy Murray file since then, as has the Scot.

As with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, they have established such a long-running rivalry that there is little about each other's game they do not know. They no doubt recognise tics and twitches, like two gunslingers eyeing up each other and squinting for the merest advantage in time and anticipation.

As ever, especially on grass, those reaction times against big serves will determine the early tone and the result of their 19th contest. And the prize is the same. Djokovic says he had dreamt of winning Wimbledon since he was a small boy. Murray, also, has had that dream – with the attendant nightmare of a nation's expectations. He has tried hard to ignore that burden but it is difficult to believe it is not lurking in a small part of his brain.

"Any tennis player, that is the goal that you have," he said on Saturday after his final workout on Court 15, the place he has been going to for each of his eight campaigns here. "You want to try to win Wimbledon and the closer you get to it the more you are obviously going to think about it. But the most important thing is that you aren't looking [too far] ahead.

"At no stage of the match can you get too ahead of yourself. Against most players that is dangerous, against someone like Novak that is even more dangerous, because he is extremely fit and doesn't give anything away. I am going to need to earn every point."

Even the language that Murray uses is that of suffering: the "need to earn", the obligation to live up to the demands of his sport, to put it on the line. Nothing will come easy for either of them on Sunday afternoon.

As for the expectation of others, they will not go away. Can Djokovic win his second Wimbledon, or will Murray win his first? Will this be another defining match in the game's new rivalry? These are the questions people will be thinking, even if for the participants such considerations are secondary to the job in hand. That is how professionals talk and prepare.

They cannot afford to be distracted by history or statistics. So here are some numbers for them to ignore: 1,600,000 for a start, the prize in sterling for the champion, twice as much as for the loser, which is the way it should be – and all part of a quite staggering increase in overall prize money of 49%.

There a few other digits that matter: the No1 ranking will stay with Djokovic, whatever the result, and Murray will stay at No2. The last time the world's two best players were in this final was two years ago, when Djokovic beat Nadal – and how unceremoniously did the Spaniard leave us this time, bombed out on the first day, followed quickly by Federer. Times are shifting rapidly.

So what of their form here? Djokovic, it has to be said, has looked slightly stronger overall. Murray has had more anxious moments but they have both found a way through. When they dragged themselves away to their respective ice baths on Friday, Murray had racked up 14 hours and 51 minutes of court time, Djokovic 25 minutes fewer. That's only about an hour longer than they spent beating each other up in their last three grand slam finals.

But will their only grasscourt match – Murray's win at Wimbledon in the semi-finals of the London Olympics a year ago – be an X factor in the equation, a key to the result?

"I don't know how many times I have played him," Murray said, "about 12 times? [18, with the Serb up 11-7] and we have played so many points, so many close sets, so many long rallies. I don't know whether it is a match, or a few points or just years of information gathered against each other, I don't know exactly what it will be that makes the difference.

"But, having played against him and won against him on grass will help me. I know what worked against him at the Olympics and hopefully some of those things will work again."

So, alongside struggle there is hope. We had better prepare for another mighty collision of wills.

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Andy Murray v Novak Djokovic: a Wimbledon showdown to savour | Observer editorial

Change of service: Wimbledon delivered a string of surprises this year. Photograph: Tom Jenkins

For all its grace and gentility, the annual spectacle of Wimbledon is about the closest we come on our sofas to what students of the higher primates call a "dominance hierarchy". Such a hierarchy involves the continuous head-to-head confrontation between members of a social group to establish a ranking order of prowess and strength and, ultimately, to establish the alpha male. In less evolved species, such contests are explicitly linked to mating rights, which, of course, have no place at all in our subconscious fascination with the green theatre of Centre Court (cut here to intimate close-up reaction of girlfriend to that last impossible backhand down the line).

Just occasionally in all such dominance hierarchies, an unforeseen shift occurs overnight, and all that seemed stable suddenly looks thrillingly provisional. This year's Wimbledon has been so fascinating because it has dramatised exactly such a shift. The surprising frailty of the old order of Federer and (wounded) Nadal – and in the women's draw Sharapova and Serena – has been unceremoniously exposed, and new fearless pretenders have emerged: the indomitable Marion Bartoli, the alarming roaring Pole, Jerzy Janowicz, and Juan Martín del Potro, testing every detail of the world No 1's mettle in nearly five hours of brutal and mesmerising combat.

That Andy Murray should have emerged from this wildly uncertain fortnight to face Novak Djokovic once again says pretty much everything you need to know about him as a competitor. We hesitate to suggest that Murray's time to top the dominance hierarchy – and lift that golden trophy – is overdue. Djokovic is too athletic and adamantine an opponent for that. But we take heart from the fact that Murray seems to have the knack of finding ways to prevail from unpromising ones. Whatever the outcome, we are guaranteed a very long afternoon in the summer sun, and one that will no doubt echo to that familiar guttural primal scream: "C'MON ANDY!"

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