Is he ever likely to win the great prize and take a step beyond Tim Henman, who spent a professional life time pursuing ultimately impractical glory? Not, a stunned Centre Court was forced to concede, as long as there is a player like Rafael Nadal around.

Perhaps the most savagely significant details of all were to be found not on the old green scoreboard but the birth certificates of two gifted but on this night hugely separated young men.

Nadal is 22. Murray is 21. It is no great time difference from the cradle at all, really, but then you look at their records, and their meaning as competitors, and you have to wonder what Murray has been doing all these years while Nadal has been making himself a wonder of his game.

Nadal has won four Grand Slams, all of them on the red clay of Roland Garros in Paris, and here on the grass of Murray's home tournament he chased the greatest player of his and most other generations, Roger Federer, to within a breath of defeat last summer. Nadal has been making himself a force of breathtaking strength.

What Murray has been doing, of course, is making himself a performer of high class who can win tournaments in places like San Jose in California – indeed, twice – but is it fair to either him or the sentimental of Wimbledon to project him into the ultimate competitive company of a Rafa Nadal?

Not on last night's evidence, and there were times when you wondered whether there will ever be an end to this national habit of making good, and potentially great players, almost instant members of the world elite.

Murray himself – and why not for a young player of high ability? – was prepared to believe that he could seriously compete with a man who had beaten him in all their three meetings and who last month in Paris won his fourth straight French Open not so much by beating him as picking him apart.

No doubt Murray was emboldened by his thrilling comeback against Richard Gasquet on Monday night – a triumph that indeed anointed him as the confirmed successor to Tim Henman in the eternal quest to will a Brit, born or naturalised or spirited, like Greg Rusedski, from the programme of a rival nation, to win Wimbledon.

Murray looked back on his first meeting with Nadal in the Australian Open last year and drew hope from a five set battle, despite the fact that he subsided in the fifth set by 6-1. He said: "I learnt that I could obviously play with him, play at his level. For four and a half sets I was up there with him, and definitely had my chances. Both our games have changed since then."

It was a statement that had a painful accuracy for much of last night's proceedings. Nadal's game had changed in a thunderously obvious way. He had become stronger, more certain in his talent and more aware of his ability to drain the ambitions of even the most gifted opposition.

Murray had moments illuminated by his skill and a determination that, as we saw earlier this week, can be both brilliant and cussed. But they were not so many as those when he had plainly been stripped bare by overwhelmingly superior opposition.

What was needed from him here were not flashes of virtuosity, not a suddenly rich seam of fleeting form. That's not what Nadal has accumulated in the years of relentlessly gathered strength. It is supreme confidence and consistency of effort that last night ravaged all Murray's hopes.

Inevitably there was much talk of the draining effect of Murray's comeback on Monday. But comeback efforts are pretty much routine in the matter of winning major titles. You get plenty of glory for them, and then you move on and prove yourself a serious contender.

Murray may well do so sooner or later, but then it really needs to be sooner because Nadal is not going to wait around for him to receive some kind of divine revelation. Certainly this is also true of reigning champion Roger Federer who won the first of his five straight Wimbledon titles at the age of 21 and was yesterday producing some of his most biting form.

Murray tells us that he is growing stronger – he even gave us a muscle-flexing moment worthy of the old Herculean cartoon character Popeye – and that he knows there is still much work to do. It is an encouraging resolve – and one that was entirely appropriate amid the smoke and rubble of his three-set thrashing.

Murray is a fine tennis player. But he is not a great one, not yet anyway, and in this last respect Nadal reminded us that the clock is indeed already winding down.