Alcaraz Wins Wimbledon in a Thrilling Comeback Against Djokovic
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 that is 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. 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.”
Source: The New York Times
