After years of false starts, men’s tennis finally has a proper war between the generations.
In a startling comeback that rocked the All England Club’s venerable Centre Court, Carlos Alcaraz, the 20-year-old Spanish star who has blitzed the sport in his brief career, pulled off the nearly impossible, beating Novak Djokovic in a Wimbledon final on the grass that the man widely recognized as the greatest ever to play the sport has long treated as his back lawn.
Besides chasing the Grand Slam, Djokovic was aiming to extinguish the dreams of another heralded upstart challenging his hold on the game, which, so far, has amounted to 23 Grand Slam tournament titles. Alcaraz is the standard-bearer of the next group of players who are supposed to move the sport beyond the era of the Big Three, an era that includes Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal and that Djokovic has ruled longer than many expected.
Alcaraz won the U.S. Open last year in thrilling, acrobatic fashion, serving notice that men’s tennis was going to be shaken up by an unusual talent. This year, he withdrew from the Australian Open to nurse an injury and was defeated by Djokovic in the semifinals at the French Open. But the buzz around him and his future never diminished.
“It’s great for the new generation,” Alcaraz said, “to see me beating him and making them think that they are capable to do it.”
Down after the first set and struggling simply to avoid embarrassment, Alcaraz rediscovered his unique combination of speed, power and touch and figured out the subtleties of grass-court tennis in the nick of time.
He clawed his way back into the match in an epic, 85-minute second set in which he was a point away from what figured to be an insurmountable two-set deficit.
He seized control of the match midway through the third set, then teetered in the fourth set as Djokovic, Wimbledon’s four-time defending champion and seven-time winner, rediscovered the footwork that has long served as the foundation of his success.
Djokovic is as dangerous a player as there has ever been when facing defeat, but Alcaraz rose once more to claim victory, 1-6, 7-6 (6), 6-1, 3-6, 6-4, not only overcoming Djokovic’s endless skills and talents but breaking his spirit, too.
When the momentum swung one last time, as Alcaraz cranked a backhand down the line to break Djokovic’s serve early in the fifth set, the Serb with the steely mind smashed his racket on the net post. A few points earlier, he had frittered away his chance to seize control, swinging at a floating forehand in the middle of the court and sending it into the net. Now, just a few minutes later, the thing that has so rarely happened to him in recent years — a loss to a relative newcomer on a grand stage, especially this grand stage — was happening.
Last month, Djokovic, the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, finally eclipsed his longtime rivals, Nadal and Federer. But this loss cost him a shot at one of the few prizes he has not achieved — becoming the first player since 1969 to achieve the Grand Slam in men’s singles, winning all four major tournaments in a single year. He was within one match of pulling off the feat two years ago. This time, at 36 years old, an age when most champions have retired to the broadcast booth, he was eight matches away.