Novak Djokovic won his seventh Wimbledon title by giving a masterclass to Nick Kyrgios.
The controversial Australian ranted and raved his way through a first Grand Slam final while Djokovic - winning his 21st Major - kept his cool to put Kyrgios to the sword. Djokovic won 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6, to clinch his FOURTH Championship on the spin.
The Serb has not been beaten at Wimbledon since losing in the quarter-finals in 2017. It is a remarkable record and, despite a fast start from Kyrgios, this was probably one of Djokovic’s more straightforward wins.
And the magnitude of Djokovic’s achievement should not be camouflaged by the tiresome antics of Kyrgios. Indeed, it was soon clear Centre Court was going to be treated to the full Kyrgios repertoire.
To begin with, in fairness, it was the positive section of that repertoire. In the second game of the match, there was a 125mph second serve winner and the infamous underarm delivery. It was hard to believe but Djokovic looked a little fazed and surrendered the first break of the match with a double fault. With the tweener soon on show, it actually looked, at times, as though Kyrgios was showboating.
But there was little showboating when it came his serve, closing out the first set with an ace. Djokovic is not unaccustomed to losing the first set of a big match - it happened against Cameron Norrie on Friday - and he duly settled into a groove but still needed to save four break points in the ninth game of the second set before closing it out.
And having been on, by his abysmal standards, fairly decent behaviour, Kyrgios began to conduct a running dialogue with whoever would listen - his entourage, the umpire, the crowd, himself. At one point, he wanted a female spectator ejected from the arena because “she’s the one who looks like she has had about 700 drinks.”
Whatever you think of his shot-making, he can become incredibly tiresome and, to put it bluntly, not very pleasant. But Djokovic watched it all with what looked like a sense of amused detachment and one break of serve was enough for him to take the third set.
After more protracted moaning at his friends in the box, Kyrgios did appear to regain concentration in the fourth set but, by then, Djokovic was in his winning bubble. And while he could not manage to break the Kyrgios service game, he did win the tie-break 7-3 to win the match and that magical seventh Wimbledon title.
