think the battle was an illusion to be honest. It seemingly was often close, but as another thread pointed out earlier, at the business end of sets, Djokovic was 6-0. He also won 12 out of 16 games after going down 0-2 in the first.
To me, Djokovic didn't really want to have to grind. He wanted to win the the minimal effort and kept himself just ahead of Nadal until later in sets where he simply focused harder and Nadal couldn't (yet in his current form) live with it.
Nadal was killing himself to stay in this match. Djokovic had plenty left in hand and used it when he needed to.
Key part of the match was that Nadal had to work way harder than Djokovic due to Djokovic's incredible control and mixture of shots in that match, which often had Nadal on a string. Much like with Murray having to work too hard on his service games, it was unsustainable for Nadal.
Split to 2 messages.. char. limit.