Carlos Alcaraz demolishes Novak Djokovic to retain Wimbledon title – reaction

Beatdowns in major finals? Novak Djokovic hands them out. He doesn’t usually suffer them. But he did today.

Carlos Alcaraz played lights-out tennis but the story here was Djokovic’s flat performance, especially during the first two sets of his 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 defeat.

The physical strain of playing grand-slam tennis a month after knee surgery had not been exposed in Djokovic’s six previous rounds, which had found him building towards what look like peak form.

But the intangible of tennis is that only the men on the court know how much their game has been impacted by their opponent. In the semi-final, Djokovic was given time to play by Lorenzo Musetti. In the final, Alcaraz snuffed him out.

The contest would have been done in a little over two hours, except that Alcaraz suffered a bout of nervous tension when he led 5-4, 40-0 in the third set, and donated seven successive points without Djokovic really having to do an awful lot.

But the fact that Alcaraz was so dominant from the baseline must have helped him to regather his composure. As long as he kept playing his natural game, and didn’t seize up again, the result would come.

So it proved in a tie-break that Alcaraz grabbed with the help of a luscious drop-shot: one of many such flourishes that lit up this famous old stage.

When Djokovic hit his final return into the net, the match clock read two hours and 27 minutes. The fans were buzzing: the extra drama of Djokovic’s brief reprieve had provided some narrative tension to an otherwise one-way affair.

Overall, this was a stunning display from the 21-year-old Spaniard, who thus became the first man since Roger Federer – and only the second in the Open era – to win his first four major finals.

Djokovic will reflect on a campaign that nearly achieved the impossible. He now has another fortnight to prepare for the Olympic Games in Paris.