Carlos Alcaraz 🤝 Novak Djokovic #Wimbledon pic.twitter.com/4HefpitnTt
— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 14, 2024
If you can believe it, it's barely been two years since the first time we had the pleasure of watching Carlos Alcaraz take on Novak Djokovic on the tennis court.
The stage was the 2022 Madrid Masters semifinals -- Alcaraz had literally just turned 19, but you could already see glimpses of the star he would quickly become.
While the year before he was still playing qualifiers at the Majors, he capped that season off with a win at the Next Gen Finals and a few months later captured his first ATP 1000 title, beating Stefanos Tsitsipas, Hubert Hurkacz and Casper Ruud for the crown in Miami. After racing to his fourth career title in Barcelona, he came to Madrid ranked #9 in the world and stunned five-time champion and heretofore undisputed King of Clay Rafael Nadal in the quarters. It was the young Spaniard's first -- and so far only -- win over his compatriot in three tries.
Djokovic, meanwhile, was already well-established as a contender -- and would soon become the leader -- in the GOAT debate. He'd already won twenty Major titles -- just one less than Nadal, who'd climbed back into the lead with the unlikeliest #21 in Melbourne that January. He'd swept the first three the year before, falling just one match short of what would have been the elusive Calendar Year Slam -- something that hadn't happened since 1969. He'd been ranked #1 in the world for 328 weeks and had won 86 singles trophies so far in his career. And at 35 years of age, he showed no signs of stopping.
But somehow, Alcaraz was able to prove his foil. In a three-and-a-half-plus hour match with two tiebreaks and just three breaks of serve total, the teenager pulled out the win and go on to claim the title. Later that year he would earn his first Major at the U.S. Open and climb to the #1 spot himself.
Since that inaugural meeting, the careers of the two men have been remarkably similar. Alcaraz has picked up eleven more titles, Djokovic twelve. They've won all but two of the ten Majors that have been contested -- four apiece. Together they've spent 80 weeks at #1. And appropriately, they've split the six meetings they've had so far.
Was the Madrid semifinal the start of the next great rivalry in tennis? Probably not -- with 16 years of age separating Alcaraz and Djokovic, one has to think the number of times we'll see them square off again are limited. But it might have signaled a passing of the torch.
After all, I'm not sure anyone expected yesterday's Wimbledon final to result in the drubbing it did.
Sure, Djokovic was just a month removed from a knee surgery that I so wrongly assumed would keep him out of the All England Club altogether. Sure, it had been eight months since he last won a title -- marking the first time since 2006 he'd gone this far into a season without scoring a trophy. Sure, his first two opponents in London were ranked outside the top 120 and he benefitted from a walkover by Alex de Minaur in the quarters, so his road to the final was less than fraught with obstacles.
But he had trounced former world #4 Holger Rune in the fourth round and in the semis drubbed Lorenzo Musetti, who'd taken two sets off him in each of their previous two Grand Slam meetings. And with Major #25 and Wimbledon #8 in his sights, you'd expect to see him fight like he always does.
As it turned out, though, another marathon nail-biter was not in the cards.
Alcaraz broke his opponent right off the bat and run off to a 5-1 lead in the first set. He was similarly strong to start the second and quickly built a two-set lead. But we know better than to ever count out Djokovic, who's come back from two sets down eight times at Slams, by my count. And when he saved three championship points late in the third set to score his first break of Alcaraz's serve, it seemed like he might be able to pull off the impossible again.
But Carlos proved to be ever resilient, and after just two-and-a-half, he was the one lofting the Wimbledon trophy this year.
Sunday's victory gives Alcaraz a slew of new superlatives. He's now 4-0 in his first four Major finals -- of the Big Four, only Roger Federer has done that. After the French Open he became the youngest (male) player ever to win a Slam on all three surfaces, and now he's the youngest to win at both Roland Garros and the All England Club in the same year. If he can manage a victory in Australia, he'd have achieved the career Grand Slam before he turns 22.*
So it certainly seems like we've entered a new era of tennis greatness, with a new set of rivalries sure to emerge. It's still early in Alcaraz's career, of course, but he sure seems like he's going to be a force in this sport for some time. Will he, in ten, fifteen years' time, be rivaling Djokovic for the GOAT crown, Nadal for clay supremacy?
Who knows.
But for now, it's nice to know we were there when it all started.
* Serena Williams, of course, did win the French and Wimbledon in 2002, a few months before she turned 21, and completed the Serena Slam the following January in Australia a few months after that birthday.