Wimbledon – This is not a passing of the torch. It’s more like grabbing a torch and sprinting around the bends before running down the road for a mile or two.
Carlos Alcaraz narrowly defeated Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon men’s final last year, taking advantage of rare errors from the 24-time Grand Slam champion in five sets that lasted nearly five hours. Win the battle.
He smuggled the title away. On Sunday, he hammered, danced and lobbed his way to a second consecutive Wimbledon men’s singles title. It was a 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (7-4) victory over Djokovic and his surgically repaired right knee on a court that the Serb has primarily owned for more than a decade.
When something happens twice, it’s no longer an accident, whether the knee is sick or not.
For a 37-year-old champion who has been playing professional tennis for 20 years, joint deterioration is something that must be faced.
Alcaraz allowed Djokovic to contort himself in the final (Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
What bad luck. This is also life in the twilight of tennis, as many others who have lived through it can attest. It’s this slow extinguishing of the light that gives players like 21-year-old Alcaraz — a generational talent whose game is imbued with the joy so many other players crave — the chance to grab the torch and carry it with them. It escapes and lights the torch.
For much of the decade, Djokovic was the dominant figure. Even last year, when Alcaraz hurt him at center court, it was the only miss in one of his greatest seasons. He won Grand Slam titles at the Australian, French and U.S. Opens; he won the season-ending Tour Finals; and at the end of the year, he finished No. 1 on the leaderboard for the eighth time.
Already 36 years old.
bute is now 37 years old.
For seven magical weeks, beginning in Paris in late May and ending on Sunday on the sport’s most famous court, Alcaraz made it look like the most glorious and accomplished of the modern tennis era. The last great chapter of a career.
There is still a possibility that Djokovic will rise again. He’s done a lot of rising things at the All England Club over the past two weeks that few would have attempted at the time. When he defends his U.S. Open title in New York in late August, he should be working as hard as a 37-year-old to stay in shape.
But forget all that for now. With this win, Alcaraz joins one of the most exclusive clubs in men’s tennis. He became the rare player to win on the slow clay of Roland Garros in June and then repeat the trick on the smooth grass of SW19 in July.
Rod Laver. Bjorn Borg. Rafael Nadal. Roger Federer. Djokovic. Now Alcaraz. That’s what the open era is like. With an extra chair at the end, they could sit in a private room at a Wimbledon Village pub.
Alcaraz wins Wimbledon for the second consecutive year (Aaron Chown/PA Images via Getty Images)
“It’s a huge honor for me,” the Spaniard said as he clutched the trophy in the afternoon sun. “Great champion.”
Then he said he wasn’t one of them yet. He still has a lot of work to do.
He’s off to a great start.
Djokovic called Alkaraz’s victory “inevitable”, 12 days after the Serb completed surgery on the surgeon general’s side The physical therapist who guided him through meniscus surgery on June 5 looked like a true master of his trade. As he dispatched Lorenzo Musetti to his 10th Wimbledon final and 37th Grand Slam final on Friday, he seemed to float around the court as if the surgery had happened in the distant past. .
In recent years, he has won major titles while playing through torn abdominal muscles and hamstrings. Today at Wimbledon, he will complete the task less than six weeks after knee surgery.
However, then Alcaraz appeared on the other side of the net.
This was not the nervous, first-time Wimbledon finalist who lost his first five games before recovering from an early blitz 12 months ago. Alcaraz is no longer a prodigy, he’s a man with a championship to defend on Sunday and a chance to put the sport on its knees.
Alcaraz fired the shot into the net for the winner (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
“He’s better than me in every aspect of the game,” Djokovic said. There may be an asterisk attached to this final, and if Djokovic returns to his pre-knee surgery form, the asterisk could become even bigger or even a figment of that player. For now, this is an unblemished assessment. “Moving. He hit the ball really beautifully. From the beginning, he was better.
Djokovic served first. Ten minutes later, he was still serving, trying his best to win the first game of the match, which was often pointless. They went back and forth, with seven deuces and Alcaraz had five break chances.
Alcaraz hit his first stunning shot of the day in 12 minutes, a searing forehand down the line that Djokovic blasted into the back of the net. Djokovic didn’t even look back. This was the shot Alcaraz dropped when he felt his magic.
Djokovic’s chest rose and fell between the two points, and his gasps could be heard 250 feet away. No wonder he caught up with the volley half a step too late, the ball sank under the net, and then he secretly swung the racket with his backhand and sent the ball into the net. He then hit an easy forehand wide. He got himself into a hole – a hole he spent the next 135 minutes trying to dig himself out of.
Alcaraz drags Djokovic around the court in his living room (John Walton/PA Images via Getty Images)
He then reflected on last year’s epic five-set loss.
“WDjokovic said he was both proud to have achieved such results so soon after surgery, but also frustrated at how much things had changed in 12 months. “This year, that’s not the case. It’s all about him. He’s the dominant force.
Everyone will probably have to get used to this, if they haven’t already.
The 23-year-old Australian Open champion Jannik Sinner of Italy remains No. 1 in the world because of the complexity of the ranking formula used in the sport. Alcaraz may be back there soon. Plus, regardless of ranking, the Spaniard is now a leader in a sport that’s still evolving, a four-time Grand Slam champion. He excelled at tennis acrobatics and loved tennis almost as much as winning—sometimes even more. He did a lot of both.
“Shotmaker” didn’t make the most of his game. Alcaraz is a shot creator, a player who must always innovate and improvise, pushing the limits of what he can do with his racket and ball.
After conceding three championship points on his own serve, Alcaraz had to regroup, sending the final set into a tiebreak and holding off Djokovic for the final time.
As he sprinted into the net, Djokovic fired a ball into his laces. Alcaraz jumped up and dipped the top of his racket into the grass. Somehow, he got the ball spinning over the net. He tried to suppress a smile and wagged his finger at the crowd as he walked back to start the next point.
Alcaraz’s skills in front of the pitch made a huge impact (Frey/TPN via Getty Images)
Then he hit his second serve at 120 mph and it was like those three match points had never happened, and then it was a tiebreak, and then it was déjà vu. From Paris. Alcaraz climbed into the stands again, joined his team, and had a three-way hug with his parents before having the longest ever moment with former world No. 1, his coach and tennis father Juan Carlos Ferrero. Embrace.
As he ascends into the rarefied air of the French Open and Wimbledon double club, he knows what he has achieved and is ready to enter the new year as the champion of the sport’s most important tournament.
He was on his way to where he wanted to be, already a star but still emerging.
“It’s good to have new faces in tennis,” he said.
Especially him, the most dazzling new face.
(Photo: Getty Images; Design: Dan Goldfarb)
