After the anger and the frustration came the sense and the perspective. Novak Djokovic’s winning run at Wimbledon was over and he had been beaten at his own game. Carlos Alcaraz not only triumphed in the battle of generations but in the contest of nerves and minds, prevailing in the fifth set of a Wimbledon final that will be remembered as one of the greatest ever played. Regrets? There were two: Djokovic allowed the second-set tiebreak to slip away, then when Alcaraz broke his serve in the fifth, Djokovic smashed his racket into the net post. “It was a frustration in the moment,” he conceded. “Not much to say about that.”
But Djokovic accepted the result. “He was a deserved winner today, no doubt,” Djokovic said. After winning eight five-setters in a row, he believed a defeat was finally overdue. “I’ve won some epic finals that I was very close to losing,” he admitted. “Maybe this is kind of a fair-and-square deal.”
