Carlos Alcaraz Wins Wimbledon the Hardest Way: Through Novak Djokovic

Tennis’s most stubborn champion would encounter a contender who was respectful but unshaken, who wasn’t rattled by his legend, or endurance, or head games, and would rise to the moment, unabashedly, as a young Djokovic once did, long ago.

Djokovic would relinquish the throne, as kings eventually do.

But he kept winning, and tennis started to have its doubts. Djokovic continued to add to his unprecedented men’s singles career—23 major titles, the most of all time. He won another in Australia in January, and Paris in June. He raced to the final of this year’s Wimbledon, already the winner of seven titles here, including the last four.

At 36, Djokovic’s grip was firm. Youth remained foiled. Up-and-comers were spellbound, beaten from the start.

It appeared to be happening again Sunday, as Djokovic blew away an inexperienced finalist in the first set.

Then it changed—gradually, then all at once, as the old saying goes.

The empire is done. Wimbledon has a new king: Carlos Alcaraz, a 1-6, 7-6(6), 6-1, 3-6, 6-4 winner over an aging titan who finally relinquished his reign.

It was a rollicking match you could feel in your guts, no matter who you pulled for. It offered a bit of everything: momentum for both players, a one-sided start, a tense tiebreaker, a time violation, an extended bathroom break, a broken racket, a rowdy audience alternating between silence and rapture, and a VIP list that included the Prince and Princess of Wales, the King of Spain, and Brad Pitt, the Duke of Handsome.

Alcaraz had won a major before—last year’s U.S. Open. But Djokovic wasn’t at that one, so this win feels like a generational changing of the guard, or at least a very conspicuous first step. Roger Federer is retired. Rafael Nadal is injured and hoping for a final season. Djokovic could keep winning for years, of course—I’d never count him out.

But Alcaraz is now the Greatest Show in Tennis. He is the youngest winner at Wimbledon since Boris Becker, and Bjorn Borg before Boris. In a brief time—just four career tournaments as a pro—he has mastered the fickle grass surface and made it his funhouse.

Nothing about this feels like a fluke. If anyone was going to do what happened Sunday, it was going to be Alcaraz. The 20-year-old from Spain has become tennis’s destination thrill ride, a (barely) 6-foot-1 dynamo of athleticism and shot-making who would run across a creek full of crocodiles to make a spectacular return.

Importantly, Alcaraz seems to have the necessary maturity. He appreciates his elders, but also wants to play them and thump them into the dirt. He’d been a baby at the launch of the Big Three, raised in the shadow of Spanish idol Nadal. When Federer retired, Alcaraz spoke with regret that they’d never tangled.

Djokovic—in a major—loomed as an important hurdle, an essential passage for the world No. 1. At this year’s French, they split a thrilling pair of sets in the semifinals before Alcaraz was overcome by leg cramps and fell apart. It looked like a preparation error, a rookie mistake.

Alcaraz learned. “I took a lesson from that match,” he said Sunday. It’s what you want to see.

This time he beat Djokovic by playing like him, by staying fit and playing with a confidence younger players have rarely shown against any of the Big Three. After that near-bagel in the opening set, Alcaraz did what he needed to do, which was to go right back at Djokovic and turn the match around. He stopped playing timidly. He started hitting harder—taking nothing off the pace, risking his demise on clever drop shots and gutsy, angular winners.

The moment wasn’t too bright. Carlos wasn’t going to be a passenger.

Of course, Djokovic is Djokovic, and you know how that goes. He’s won many of his majors after the match appeared headed to the other guy. There may be no harder opponent to close out in sports—not just in men’s tennis, but all of sports. Even after you defeat Djokovic, you should go up to the scorekeeper and get the result in writing, just to confirm.

The crowd wanted Alcaraz, bad. It didn’t seem to faze Djokovic. Creases on his face, jawline covered in stubble, eyes like daggers at the umpire following that time infraction, Djokovic still thrives as the heel, even with Roger and Rafa gone. It’s a role he’s played before.

He doesn’t need the crowd, of course. No player has ever been better at shutting out the noise, squashing pretty story lines, breaking the hearts of tennis romantics. Even when Djokovic lost his composure—as he did early in the fifth, smashing a racket after having his serve broken, a chorus of boos raining down—he remained a threat. He was Djokovic.

This is why we know Alcaraz is for real: because he did the hardest possible thing. He showed up at Wimbledon and defeated a historic champion, a player with a strong case as the greatest to ever do it, who loves this tournament and its grass as much as anyone. He did it through a fire, in a comeback, in five sets, with ruthlessness. Novak Djokovic finally met his Novak Djokovic, and he was Carlos Alcaraz.