In Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic Has a Much-Needed Gift: A Rival

Novak Djokovic had dominated all the most important moments of the primary half of this tennis season. After successful his tenth Australian Open, he emerged with the Roland Garros crown, his twenty third Grand Slam match title, tied for the profession report.

A win at Wimbledon, on tennis’s most hallowed floor, would have put him three-quarters of the way in which to turning into the primary man to attain a calendar Grand Slam in 54 years. The Serb appeared destined to face alone as an unchecked nice of the game, surpassing the win totals of each Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal with out a credible challenger to the throne.

Then got here Hurricane Carlito, a.okay.a. Carlos Alcaraz, stunning the tennis world with a championship match victory over Djokovic on the slick Wimbledon grass, a floor assumed to have been the Spaniard’s kryptonite.

How shortly fates can change. Wimbledon was simply the third head-to-head match between the 2. But when the ultimate was over, as Alcaraz lofted the best trophy in tennis skyward, a budding tug of battle had morphed right into a full-blown rivalry for males’s tennis supremacy.

What a present Alcaraz is for tennis.

What a present this still-new pressure is for Djokovic.

Now their pairing, essentially the most electrical in tennis, is broadly anticipated to be the fun of this yr’s U.S. Open. Alcaraz, the world’s top-ranked male participant, will defend his U.S. Open championship, which he received in 2022’s Djokovic-less area.

Watching Alcaraz, a supreme expertise at simply 20, play in individual is like seeing a fresh-off-the-assembly-line Maserati burst down the freeway, leaving each different make and mannequin in its wake. You understand you’ve by no means seen one thing on the highway so smooth, nimble, highly effective or suited to its process.

It is commonly a turning level in skilled tennis when a gifted younger expertise ascends to stardom in such fast vogue. In the lads’s sport, to quote simply two situations, consider 18-year-old Bjorn Borg serving to open the curtain for the Nineteen Seventies tennis growth by successful the French Open in 1974. Flash ahead to 19-year-old Pete Sampras heralding a brand new period by successful the U.S. Open in 1990.

Alcaraz’s emergence presents new potentialities.

But even with one million miles on his legs and a proper arm liable to damage, Djokovic, 36, is embracing the problem of fending him off. He has described Alcaraz as one thing solely novel: a combination of Nadal’s bullish willpower, Federer’s grace and the Serb’s canny guile. “I haven’t played a player like him,” Djokovic mentioned of Alcaraz, in glowing and astonished phrases.

At the Western & Southern Open finals two weeks in the past within the Cincinnati space, Djokovic usually appeared able to buckle within the center-court sauna that was the championship match.

Between factors of a traditional contested for practically 4 sweltering hours, Djokovic gasped for breath. During changeovers, he stared woefully downward and wrapped baggage of ice round his neck.

Then he rose. And took over.

Djokovic beat again a match level and saved successful essential factors — sprinting to all corners, redirecting Alcaraz howitzers with topspin, underspin and sidespin, besting the highly effective upstart with velocity, contact and cleverness.

When it was over, the scoreboard spoke to the small margin between these two. Djokovic received, 5-7, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (4). That’s the distinction of 1 shot, perhaps two. An inch extra distance on a serve, an inch much less heft on a lob.

Given the sudden depth of their matches, it’s exceptional to recollect they performed for the primary time, on the Madrid clay, in 2022 — a match received by Alcaraz. After they traded the No. 1 rating in males’s tennis this season, their head-to-head report is even at 2-2.

Their pairing has added an sudden third act to Djokovic’s 20-year profession.

Act I: The long-ago time when he appeared perpetually within the shadow of Nadal and Federer.

Act II: In 2011, he launched into essentially the most beautiful run within the historical past of males’s tennis, an epoch by which he received 22 of his males’s report 23 Grand Slam occasions and got here to dominate his two rivals. Was it due to his gluten-free, plant-based food plan? Or all of the meditation and yoga and psychological coaching? Did it matter?

Act III: With Federer retired to run his enterprise empire and Nadal’s accidents placing his return to the tour doubtful, Djokovic’s profession was lastly unshackled from these two cussed threats. Then a brand new opponent emerged.

For a participant as prideful and conscious of his place within the tennis firmament as Djokovic, the considered Alcaraz’s subsequent 15 years maybe affords new motivation. Should he stay wholesome, it’s potential to think about the Spaniard difficult Djokovic’s voluminous information, together with the mind-boggling haul of Grand Slam occasions.

But let’s not get too far forward of ourselves. What could possibly be coming subsequent is thrilling sufficient.

“I’m hoping we can play in some weeks’ time in New York,” Djokovic advised Alcaraz on the trophy ceremony in Ohio. Knowing the highest two seeds might meet solely within the closing, the group roared in approval. “That would be nice.”