A new title at Wimbledon, his fourth in a Grand Slam tournament and only 21 years old, give us clear clues of what Carlos Alcaraz can achieve. Yesterday on the courts of the All England Tennis Club he gave a recital of great tennis and demonstrated, once again, that he has all the qualities of the greatest tennis players. If technically it is very difficult to see any weakness in him, in the physical aspect he is the fastest player I have ever seen on a court. Beating him is only within the reach of the most complete tennis players and, only, if they are having their best day.
This time he was unstoppable throughout the match and overwhelmed Djokovic both with speed and solidity. He was far superior at all times and the feeling he conveyed from the start of the match was that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for victory to slip away from him.
The match was always in his hands and he was extraordinary in all facets of the game. His forehands from the baseline, above all, were devastating. He easily won the first two sets by a resounding double 6-2 and only a mistake on his part, when he was serving to close the match with a clear 5-4, 40-0, allowed the Serb to harbour some little hope for the outcome of the match. At no time, in fact, did Nole give the impression that he had the weapons to decisively intimidate his rival. His strokes lacked the precision and power necessary to dismantle the game of the current winner.
I can imagine, as I wrote the day before the final, the doubts that Novak and his entire team had when approaching the match. The decision was not easy. It is the same one that many players and teams face when facing a superior opponent. How do we approach the match? Do we approach it with our usual weapons and our own style or, on the contrary, do we try to neutralize our opponent by looking for other solutions by moving away from our characteristic game? Personally, I always chose the first. If it is already difficult to play well doing what one is used to doing, it has always seemed much more difficult to me to do well, and even more so in a final, which is not my custom.
Djokovic opted for the second option. Knowing that neither his legs nor the precision of his strokes were what they once were, and that a long and physical match would not help him either, he tried a tactic that ultimately proved suicidal. He wanted to impose a high tempo, play aggressively, shorten the exchanges from the back of the court and at the slightest opportunity, close out the points at the net.
In my opinion, the only option the Serbian had was to try to slow down the game. To hope that he was completely right and to trust that Carlos was not having his best day. Trying to beat the player from Murcia by speed is practically impossible nowadays. Perhaps only Jannik Sinner can play the Spaniard on equal terms. And, in fact, this Sunday’s final confirms that the real rivalry in the next tournaments and, probably, in the next few years will be between these two: the Italian and our great Spanish champion.
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