Tom Cruise looked down from the Royal Box as Novak Djokovic’s “Mission Impossible” came to grief in the Wimbledon final.
But for the inspired form of Carlos Alcaraz, Djokovic could potentially have lifted the trophy here, just five weeks after undergoing surgery on a torn knee meniscus. Had he done so, this would have ranked among the greatest feats of his record-breaking career.
Remember that Djokovic had already surged through six rounds of this event while dropping only two sets. When he eviscerated Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti in Friday’s semi-final, he looked close to his all-conquering best.
Unfortunately for Djokovic, though, tennis is a dialogue rather than a soliloquy. To perform at your best, you need a helpful partner to feed you the set-up lines – something that Cruise would also understand. And where Musetti had given Djokovic time and space to command the stage, Alcaraz took hold of this final with a series of his own unforgettable zingers.
Forty-two clean winners flowed from the Spanish racket, far outshining 26 from Djokovic. In other words, Alcaraz clinched almost 40 per cent of his points with an unanswered punchline.
“He played every single shot better than I did,” acknowledged Djokovic after his 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 defeat. “He just was better than me in every aspect of the game: in movement, in the way he was striking the ball beautifully, serving great, everything.”
Asked about the aftermath of his knee surgery, Djokovic said “That probably had an effect, particularly in the opening rounds. As the tournament progressed, I felt better and better. But yeah, today I was half a step behind him.”
It was noticeable from the early stages that Djokovic lacked his usual explosivity out of the corners. Normally, he slides into his shots at the extremities of the court, splaying his legs out wide, and then pushes off the outside foot as he recovers towards the middle of the court.
On Sunday, though, he did not seem prepared to risk his right knee – which is still encased in a compression sleeve – by entering this trademark near-splits position. He tried to avoid baseline rallies by shortening the points and coming to the net, a position he had used to great effect against Musetti. But Alcaraz is a far superior player, and he repeatedly bypassed a stranded Djokovic with his broad repertoire of passing shots.
The tone was set in a remarkable opening game that lasted 14 minutes and found Alcaraz breaking serve on his fifth opportunity. At that point, the Centre Court crowd were settling in for a marathon. But Djokovic could not sustain his intensity, and indeed he would have been eliminated in a fraction above two hours if Alcaraz had closed out a 5-4, 40-0 lead in the third set.
With the trophy in his grasp, Alcaraz suffered a bout of nervous tension, donating seven successive points in a blaze of unforced errors. Impressively, though, he regathered his composure quickly. This was probably a consequence of the all-court dominance that Djokovic referenced above. As long as Alcaraz kept playing his natural game, and didn’t seize up again, he could be confident the result would come.
So it proved in a tie-break that Alcaraz grabbed with the help of a luscious drop-shot: one of many such flourishes that lit up this famous old stage.
When Djokovic hit his final return into the net, the match clock read two hours and 27 minutes. The fans were buzzing: the extra drama of Djokovic’s brief reprieve had provided some narrative tension to an otherwise one-way affair.
Alcaraz thus became only the sixth man in the Open era to do the Channel double: winning the French Open and Wimbledon back-to-back. The previous names constitute a who’s who of tennis royalty: not only Djokovic but Federer, Nadal, Borg and Laver.
“It is a huge honour for me to be a part of those players,” Alcaraz told Annabel Croft during the presentation ceremony. “I’m really happy to be at the same table as Novak to do it. Huge champions. I don’t consider myself a champion yet. Not like them. I try to keep going and building my path, my journey.”
Alcaraz also became the second man in the Open era, after Federer, to win his first four major finals. The scary thing for his rivals is that he continues to improve. Djokovic was clearly shocked by the quality of Alcaraz’s serve in this match, saying “Maybe I was missing something this tournament, but I’ve never seen him serve that fast.”
As he prepares for the Olympic Games in just a fortnight’s time, Djokovic can reflect on a campaign that nearly achieved the impossible. At the same time, though, he knows he has work to do.
“In a match-up today against the best player in the world – I mean, other than Jannik [Sinner], and both of them are the best this year by far – I feel like I’m not at that level.
“In order to really have a chance to beat these guys in grand-slam latter stages or Olympics, I’m going to have to play much better than I did today, and feel much better than I did today.”
Carlos Alcaraz retains his Wimbledon title – as it happened
06:00 PM BST
Wimble-done!
The Telegraph
