Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz beats Novak Djokovic in Wimbledon final

The winner of Wimbledon, which ended in London, was the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, who in a dramatic five-set final in 4 hours and 42 minutes broke the resistance of the 23-time Grand Slam winner 36-year-old Novak Djokovic. This is the second major title won by the 20-year-old world leader. The Serb, on the other hand, failed to win Wimbledon for the eighth time, catch up with Swiss Roger Federer in this indicator and become the oldest champion of this competition in history.

After the end of this tennis battle, the wooden post closest to the referee’s tower, to which the net is attached, should have been sent straight from Center Court to the Wimbledon Museum. It would become a very extraordinary exhibit there, since it will forever preserve the juicy dent made by Novak Djokovic at the end of the fatal third game of the fifth game for him, when the Serb’s racket almost broke in half as a result of hitting the same rack. It was a gesture of desperation.

Perhaps Djokovic understood that in such cases, the fate of the title can be decided by one mistake, and in this case he made it himself.

It happened when a break point was played in the second game on the serve of Carlos Alcaras, when the Serbian tennis player, having forced his opponent to go into the defensive, decided to play too carefully before the last blow from the summer and paid the price, hitting the net with a trembling hand. The payoff came immediately. A break immediately followed from Alcaraz, who took the lead – 2: 1, and although Djokovic will still fight in the remaining seven games, he will not be able to save the meeting.

In recent years, any Grand Slam final involving Djokovic is statistically special. And this one at Wimbledon was no exception. Suffice it to say that the age difference between the 36-year-old Serbian and the 20-year-old Spaniard was 15 years and 349 days, and was the largest since 1974 for the decisive matches of the London Major. It was impossible to give unequivocal preference to one of the rivals. On the side of Djokovic was the gigantic experience of his 34 previous similar finals, including 23 victories, but after defeating Yannick Sinner in the semi-finals, the Serbian rightly argued that such prestigious titles were not won by experience alone.

From this point of view, it was surprising that the first set flew by in about half an hour and passed with an overwhelming advantage for Djokovic. He looked like the real owner of Center Court, while Alcaraz, making one mistake after another, was nervous and cursed towards his coaching team. In order to take the game to zero, Djokovic lacked only two points in the sixth game on the Spaniard’s serve, but he also took the last two games of the Roland Garros semi-final from Alcaraz with a score of 6:1. And to give the first racket of the world just one game in three sets in a row is also a kind of achievement.

True, compared with the Paris meeting in London, the situation was completely different. Then Alcaraz could not stand the tension of an incredibly intense struggle and in the second half of the match he could hardly move his legs due to cramps, and now he just failed his debut. The same happens with more mature masters. It is no coincidence that in the second installment, the struggle between the leaders of two stellar tennis generations – the outgoing and the future – took on a completely different look. Alcaraz began to improve, but the break in the first game was not enough for him. Djokovic immediately returned the pitch, and then, drawing a beautiful draw of 29 strokes, he caught up with the Spaniard. The Serb no longer had a clear advantage in draws, but until the moment when he led 6:5 in the tie-break and earned a set point, it was impossible to imagine that real drama awaited Djokovic ahead. The next three points determined the fracture. The Serb gave two of them to the Spaniard with his mistakes when performing a high-rebound backhand, after which Alcaraz, having contrived, converted his setball with an irresistible hit right through.

And then there was the third set with an early break by Alcaraz and an extraordinary fifth game on Serb’s serve, which lasted 26 minutes. The game went to the Spaniard from the sixth break point, and in the end of the game Djokovic was not like himself, having received 1:6. And everything hung in the balance for him, since all ten matches at the Grand Slam tournaments, during which Alcaraz led 2: 1, remained in sets for the Spaniard.

The reason that Djokovic failed in the middle of the meeting, of course, was psychology. In his career, there have been cases before when he could not cope with the burden of responsibility.

The latest example of this was the 2021 US Open final against Daniil Medvedev, when, in three sets from a historic achievement – the fourth victory of the season at the Grand Slam tournaments – Djokovic lost in all respects to the Russian. However, that failure was the exception to the rule. In addition, Medvedev looked practically infallible that day, which in this case could not be said about Alcaraz.

After leaving the locker room for almost seven minutes, the veteran returned and with the help of two breaks took the fourth set. But soon came the same denouement with a pothole on the counter. As a result, Djokovic for the first time in his career lost a match at Wimbledon in which he took the first set. He also failed to become the oldest Wimbledon champion in the Open era (since 1968), win his 24th major title and take the third step towards winning the Grand Slam this season.

For Alcaraz, the champion of last year’s US Open, this is only the second victory in the majors. But surely she is dear to him no less than the first. After all, now his opponent in the final was Djokovic himself, and who knows how many more times they will meet in such important matches. And will it happen at all.

Evgeny Fedyakov