Tennis usually passes the torch. Carlos Alcaraz runs with it
WIMBLEDON — This wasn’t a passing of the torch. It was more like grabbing the torch, followed by a sprint around the bend and then another mile or two down the road.
Last year, Carlos Alcaraz narrowly defeated Novak Djokovic in the men’s Wimbledon final, capitalizing on a few rare errors from the now 24-time Grand Slam champion to win a thrilling five-set battle that lasted nearly five hours.
He snuck away with that title. On Sunday, he hammered and danced and drop shot his way to a second straight Wimbledon men’s singles title, a 6-2, 6-2, 7-6(7-4) thrashing of Djokovic and his surgically repaired right knee on a court the Serb has largely owned for more than a decade.
If something happens twice, it is no longer an accident, regardless of whether it is a knee injury or not.
A joint that is deteriorating is the kind of problem that a 37-year-old champion who has played professional tennis for 20 years faces.
Alcaraz left Djokovic confused throughout the final (Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
It’s bad luck. It’s also life in tennis’s twilight, as so many who’ve lived through it can attest. It’s the kind of slow dying of the light that gives a player like the 21-year-old Alcaraz — a generational talent who plays with a joy that so many other players yearn for — the chance to grab a torch and run with it, to light up the sport.
Djokovic has been the dominant player for nearly a decade. Even last year, when Alcaraz overtook him on Centre Court, it was the only misstep in one of his best seasons. He won Grand Slam titles at the Australian, French and US Opens; he won the season-ending Tour Finals; he had a year-end No. 1 next to his name for a record eighth time.
All 36 years old.
But hHe is now 37.
And in seven magical weeks, beginning in Paris in late May and ending on Sunday on the most famous court in the sport, Alcaraz made it all look like the final great chapter in the most decorated and successful career of the modern tennis era, which began in 1968.
Djokovic may yet rise. He has risen sharply at the All England Club in the past two weeks when few would have even tried. He should be as good as a 37-year-old fighting to keep his body in balance by the time he defends his US Open title in New York in late August.
Forget that for a moment. With this victory, Alcaraz joined one of the most exclusive clubs in men’s tennis. He became the rare player who could win on the slow red clay of Roland Garros in June and then repeat the trick on the slick grass of SW19 in July.
Rod Laver. Bjorn Borg. Rafael Nadal. Roger Federer. Djokovic. And now Alcaraz. That’s it in the Open Era. With an extra chair at the end, they fit into a booth in one of the pubs in Wimbledon Village.
Alcaraz retains Wimbledon title for second straight year (Aaron Chown/PA Images via Getty Images)
“A huge honour for me,” said the Spaniard, holding the winner’s trophy in the late afternoon sun. “Huge champions.”
Then he said that he is not one of them yet. He has a lot of work to do.
He’s off to a very good start.
Djokovic called Alcaraz’s victory “inevitable”, after 12 days in which the Serb had been his surgeon, and the physical therapist who guided him through his rehabilitation after meniscus surgery on June 5, seem to be true masters of the craft. By the time he sent Lorenzo Musetti cruising into his 10th Wimbledon final and 37th Grand Slam final on Friday, he seemed to float across and on the court, as if the surgery had taken place in the distant past.
In recent years, he had won Grand Slam titles with abdominal and hamstring tears, and today at Wimbledon he was on the verge of doing so, less than six weeks after knee surgery.
Then, however, Alcaraz appeared on the other side of the net.
This was not the nervous, debuting Wimbledon finalist who lost the first five games of the final 12 months ago but somehow recovered from that early blitzkrieg. Alcaraz is no longer a prodigy. On Sunday, he was a man defending a championship and having the chance to take the sport into a stranglehold.
Alcaraz slid this shot over the net for the winning goal (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
“He was better than me in every aspect of the game,” Djokovic said. This final may have an asterisk, an asterisk that could grow if Djokovic returns to the player he was before his knee surgery, or even a figment of that player’s imagination. For now, it’s an unblemished assessment. “Movement. He hit the ball beautifully. He was better from the start.”
Djokovic served first. Ten minutes later he was still serving, fighting with everything he had to win the often meaningless first game of a match. They went back and forth, through seven deuces and five chances for Alcaraz to break.
Alcaraz unleashed his first outrageous shot of the day midway through those 12 minutes, a blistering forehand down the line with Djokovic charging toward the net. Djokovic didn’t even bother to turn his head. It’s the shot Alcaraz lands when he’s feeling his magic.
Djokovic’s chest heaved between points, his panting audible from 250 feet away. No wonder he was half a step too late to connect with a volley, the ball dipping under the net before a stealthy backhand sweep of his racket sent it into the net. Then he hit an easy forehand that sailed wide. He put himself in a hole—a hole he would spend the next 135 minutes digging himself out of.
Alcaraz dragged Djokovic across the court he had turned into his living room (John Walton/PA Images via Getty Images)
Afterwards he thought back to the dramatic five-set defeat last year.
“W“He was neck and neck,” Djokovic said, with a mixture of pride that he had come so far so quickly after his surgery and resignation at how dramatically the dynamics had changed in 12 months. “This year it wasn’t like that at all. It was all about him. He was the dominant force.”
It’s something everyone will have to get used to, if they haven’t already.
Italian Jannik Sinner, 23, winner of the Australian Open, is still the world number one due to the complicated formula the sport uses for its rankings. Alcaraz will likely be back there soon. And whatever the rankings say, the Spaniard is now the sport’s alpha male, a four-time Grand Slam champion with a game that’s still developing. He’s capable of tennis acrobatics that he enjoys almost as much as winning — and sometimes more. He does plenty of both.
“Shotmaker” doesn’t do justice to the flair of his game. Alcaraz is a shot creator, a player who must always innovate and improvise, pushing the boundaries of what he can do with a racket and a ball.
After blowing three championship points with his own serve, Alcaraz had to reset the set to force the final set to a tiebreak and fend off Djokovic one last time.
As he raced to the net, Djokovic fired a ball toward his laces. Alcaraz leaped up and dipped the top of his racket into the grass, somehow spinning the ball just over the net. He tried to suppress a grin as he walked back to start the next point, shaking his finger at the crowd.
Alcaraz’s finesse up front made a big difference (Frey/TPN via Getty Images)
Then he hit a 120 mph second serve, as if those three match points had never happened, and then there was the tiebreaker, and then there was déjà vu from Paris. Alcaraz climbed back into the stands, joined a small group with his team, a triple hug with his parents and then the longest hug of all with Juan Carlos Ferrero, the former world number 1, his coach and tennis father since he was 14.
He knew what he had accomplished when he rose into the rarefied atmosphere of the Roland Garros-Wimbledon double club, ready to once again become champion of the sport’s most important tournament for a year.
He’s on his way to where he wants to go, still on the rise, but already a star.
“It’s good for tennis to have new faces,” he said.
Especially him, the brightest new face of them all.
(Photos: Getty Images; Design: Dan Goldfarb)
