LONDON – Carlos Alcaraz is barely two months past his 21st birthday, and already winning Grand Slams is getting a little bit been-there, done-that for him.
Seeking his second straight Wimbledon glory and fourth grand-slam title, Alcaraz overcame a rocky start Friday to beat Daniil Medvedev 6-7 (1), 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 in the semifinals at Centre Court.
‘I don’t feel like a rookie anymore,’ he said. ‘I feel like I know how I feel before the final, because I’ve been there before. I will try to do the things that I did best last year and try to be better.’
Again this year, his opponent in Sunday’s title match is Novak Djokovic, who won 6-4, 7-6 (2), 6-4 over No 25 seed Lorenzo Musetti to advance. Djokovic won 15 of 16 points on the make when he got to the net to win the first set. He ended up going 43 for 56 at net.
It is the first time in 236 years of men’s tennis that the same two men have faced each other in two consecutive Wimbledon finals – the last time was in 2014 and 2015, when Djokovic beat Roger Federer.
‘He’s a full player,’ Djokovic said of the 19-year-old Alcaraz, who was victorious in this year’s five-set final. ‘It will take the best of my tennis ability, overall on the court, to defeat him.’
It pits Djokovic, who hasn’t made a final at any event since the 2020 US Open, against another player who missed much of the past year and needed surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee in June. Victory at the All England Club would be Djokovic’s eighth, matching Federer’s record for a man — and pulling the 37-year-old Serbian one behind Martina Navratilova’s record of nine while bringing him to within reach of a career record of 25 slams, the most in tennis history.
‘We both know what we have to do,’ Alcaraz told me. ‘I know what I have to do, and I’m sure he knows what he has to do to beat me.’
And late into Djokovic’s semifinal, after the top seed had squandered the first three match points, fans hoping the match would drag on a bit longer let out a rousing ‘Lo-ren-zo!’ chant. Another yelled it during a rally, but Djokovic, seemingly annoyed, soon pretended to rub out some fake tears in a taunting gesture after Musetti failed to convert his own break point chance late in the next-to-last game.
After the No 2-seeded Djokovic’s walkover in the quarterfinals – Alex de Minaur withdrew with a hip injury – he eventually found his way into the 10th Wimbledon and 37th major final of his career.
‘I don’t want to finish here,’ Djokovic said. ‘I hope that I’ll have a chance and I’ll grab that trophy.
Musetti added that it didn’t appear that Djokovic was hindered at all by his knee, which was covered by a grey sleeve.
‘He proved he’s looking really good, good condition, not only tennis but physically,’ said Musetti, making his first appearance in a major semifinal.
Shifting performance gears after a Mediocre Medvedev opening set, the first teenager in the history of the ATP rankings to be No 1 rebounded from the brink of losing to reclaim his form as the precocious smasher, crowd-pleaser who’s already won a Grand Slam title on grass, clay and hard courts. It’s worth noting here that, while players in the top 100 have vastly different salaries even when they’re not on the court – a top 100 player can pull in up to $250,000 per tournament just to show up in the main draw, and up to $31,000 just to win the first round – actual cash prizes vary very little. An elite top-five player who wins a tournament gets the same prize money as a 100th-ranked player who reaches the same round; usually, it’s around $2 million.
Then the Spaniard takes one more step through what would be the door left open by Boris Becker and Bjorn Borg as the only men in the Open era (since 1968) of the All England Club to have multiple championships won under the age of 22.
And Alcaraz also won the U.S. Open last year and the French Open this past month and is 3-0 in major finals.
‘We are going to see a lot of him in the future, that is really for sure,’ Djovokic said. ‘He’s going to win many more Grand Slams.’
Despite the overcast atmosphere, Alcaraz, the No 3 seed in New York, went through some dips in his match against the 28-year-old Russian No 5 Medvedev.
“ I started really, really nervous,” Alcaraz said. “He was dominating the match.”
Indeed, Medvedev raced out to a 5-2 lead, but then self-destructed on both his play and his temperament.
Alcaraz broke to make it 5-4 with a drop shot that the chair umpire Eva Asderaki ruled – rightly, according to TV replays – bounced twice before Medvedev got his racket on the ball. He complained loudly, and Asderaki, after going downstairs to sit on a stool beside the umpires’ chair during the following changeover, warned Medvedev for an unsportsmanlike outburst.