It was a capital performance that Carlos Alcaraz achieved on Sunday July 16. The Spaniard dominated the Serbian Novak Djokovic, seven-time winner at Wimbledon, in 5 sets 1-6, 7-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-4 in 4:42 hours of play. Beat Djokovic, the master of places, a feat no one had achieved since Andy Murray 10 years ago at the Central of the London grand slam tournament. And it’s all the more resounding as the 20-year-old world No. 1 won Wimbledon on just his second appearance. Even he didn’t think “it would happen so soon”.
The clay-to-grass transition is never easy, you have to deal with a low and faster rebound than on ochre. Carlos Alcaraz has therefore succeeded in adapting very quickly. The Serbian, winner of 23 Grand Slam titles, conceded it himself: “I thought I had problems with you on clay and maybe on hard courts, but not on grass. Congratulations to you for being able to adapt so quickly to this surface. »
Since his round of 16 elimination against Jannik Sinner last year, the El Palmar native has come a long way in his game with power from the baseline that few players can boast of and impressive game variation. As former French tennis player Henri Leconte comments: “He is young and has a way of playing that unsettles the old guys. Also with his cushioning, his lucidity. He also has a lot more solutions and he provokes his opponent, that’s his great strength. There is also this decisive recklessness in important moments. Sometimes, when you get older, you calculate a little too much… This freedom of strike, this freedom of initiative is exceptional for him. This is shaking up world tennis, and so much the better. »
We left him at Roland-Garros with cramps in the semi-final against this same Novak Djokovic, a bitter feeling because he was holding out on the Serbian. Since June 9, Alcaraz has recovered, won the Queen’s and therefore Wimbledon. He explains “being a totally different player at Roland-Garros. I’ve grown a lot since that game. I learned a lot of lessons from it. And this time, I did things differently, especially in the mental approach, to prepare this one. It allowed me to better manage my nerves and the pressure. I think it was the mental aspect that kept me going for five sets. »
Essential elements at this level of play, as Henri Leconte points out: “Where he was impressive is how he was mentally, because he destroyed Novak Djokovic at the end by his power and his mentality. He had been taken by emotions at Roland-Garros, there he did not do the same thing. He started badly by losing the first set, but when he won the next 2 sets, we saw a Djokovic get angry, who couldn’t find the solution. Alcaraz moved up a gear in the 5th set, whether in power, morally, his game intelligence. It’s the work done with his team and Juan Carlos Ferrero to be able to forget what happened at Roland -Garros to be another man at Wimbledon”.
While Djokovic remained on 15 consecutive tie-breaks won in grand slams this season, Alcaraz was able to break this series, hold on mentally and thus reverse the course of this final. The Spanish bomb is launched and it does not seem ready to stop.
