THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, LONDON — After 126 matches on the grass of the All England Club, men’s tennis is back where it was five weeks ago, after 126 matches on the red clay of Roland Garros in Paris.
Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are the last men standing for the Wimbledon final, revving up for another edition of their growing rivalry on the biggest stage in the sport.
In a semifinal that fell well short of its billing, Sinner plowed through an ailing Novak Djokovic 6-3, 6-3, 6-4, in a match that could serve as a sad, unfortunate coda to one of the most remarkable grass careers in tennis history. Under the bright late-afternoon sun of a broiling British summer’s day, it became clear during the first minutes of the match that its outcome had been determined two days earlier.
On the third-to-last point of his quarterfinal win Wednesday against Flavio Cobolli, Djokovic slipped and fell hard on the brown grass and dirt behind the baseline. The 38-year-old’s legs spread wide like a wishbone being snapped as he went down.
He canceled his practice Thursday, then he walked onto Centre Court to play the 23-year-old world No. 1 today, hoping that some combination of physiotherapy, pain relief and adrenaline would allow him to come up with another miracle on a patch of grass he has treated like his backyard for so many years in winning this tournament seven times.
Instead, what ensued was an eerie redux of another Wimbledon lion’s last stand.
Four years ago, in the quarterfinals, Roger Federer’s surgically repaired knee failed him once again, and Hubert Hurkacz delivered the indignity of a 6-0 final set in the Swiss great’s last limp across a court on which he had spent his career appearing to float.
After losing to Sinner in three tight sets at this same stage of the French Open last month, Djokovic had declared this tournament his best shot at a record-breaking 25th Grand Slam title. Maybe even his last. A decade ago, this man with a body which could stretch like a rubber band might have been able to shake off the trauma of that tumble against Cobolli. No longer. Not against Sinner.
Djokovic began his career trying and succeeding in his efforts to disrupt the tennis duopoly of Federer and Rafael Nadal. He will finish it, whenever he does, having held back the rising tide of Alcaraz and Sinner for longer than most would have thought possible. He may yet bulwark it once more before the end.
There was even a momentary rise late this afternoon. Djokovic, down two sets, returned from an off-court break with revived legs and an arm and hips suddenly capable of slinging shots into the open court. By then, Sinner had downshifted into cruise control, a terrible idea against Djokovic, whether he is healthy or hurt.
Djokovic punched a few returns back at Sinner’s feet. The Italian smacked a forehand into the net. Djokovic had his first break of serve of the day and a 2-0 lead. A packed Centre Court exploded as he raised his racket and shook it against the dying of the light. He went up 3-0, but within 20 minutes, the run had ended. His feet stopped dancing. His hips started resisting his efforts to bend once more. Sinner locked back in as if to say, ‘Not this time’.
So it will be Sinner against Alcaraz in the final of a Grand Slam for the second time in five weeks. By the end of Sunday, those two will have split the past seven majors.
The sport now belongs to Alcaraz’s irrepressible creativity and acrobatics and Sinner’s relentless power and rhythm. To Alcaraz’s preternatural ability to flip defense into offense, and Sinner’s ruthless, first-strike mastery. No one else comes close.
Alcaraz has landed in the final the way he so often does. He flirted with disaster early, needing five sloppy sets to see off Fabio Fognini in the first round and losing sets in two of the next three, but by the end of the fourth round he had hit his stride, was gliding across the grass and spraying drop shots and lobs and an increasingly dangerous serve into nearly every corner of the court.
Earlier on Friday, in his semifinal against Taylor Fritz, he pelted first serves onto the chalk at 135mph. He didn’t lose a point on his first serve until early in the second set, winning his first 20 in a row. A sloppy game late in the second set, with a rare double fault at crunch time, allowed the American back into the match.
A desperate and determined Fritz fired his serve and unleashed his best backhand of the afternoon in the fourth-set tiebreak, getting within a point of forcing a decider. But then came the indomitable Alcaraz that Sinner will have to find some way to overcome Sunday. He returned balls at Fritz’s feet and clocked a backhand down the line that his opponent couldn’t put back in the court to cap off a four-point run and end the match in his style.
Sinner knows better than anyone what that feels like.
Last month at Roland Garros, he held a two-set lead and had three championship points against the Alcaraz serve in the final, only to watch the Spaniard rise from the dead.
Two hours after Sinner held those championship points, before letting a chance to serve out the tournament slip through his fingers, Alcaraz sprinted across the baseline to blast a forehand down the line before falling to the clay in ecstasy. After five-and-a-half hours of epic, can-you-run-this-fast?, can-you-hit-as-hard-as-I-can? tennis, the first chapter of the Sinner-Alcaraz Grand Slam final rivalry ended in the most dramatic way.
Now comes the next one.
Sinner will be playing his first Wimbledon final, trying to prove that his aggressive, Djokovic 2.0 attack can work on the grass the way it does on the hard courts of New York and Melbourne, where he has won those venues’ past three Grand Slams.
Alcaraz comes in as the two-time defending champion. He has won 20 straight matches at Wimbledon.
After beating Djokovic in the last two finals here, he gets a new test in Sinner, who has served the past two weeks the way that Alcaraz did for most of Friday. Sinner will get to balls that everyone else Alcaraz has faced could not reach. He will send them back harder than anyone else, and Alcaraz will do the same to him.
Matching a repeat of what unfolded in Paris on June 8 may be unlikely. But Sinner and Alcaraz are just getting started, and the world, Djokovic included, will be watching.
(Top photo: Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
