CINCINNATI. A month after the great Wimbledon final, Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alacaraz performed another amazing tennis show.
In the final of the tournament in Cincinnati, the Serb was more successful, winning 5:7, 7:6 and 7:6. The battle between the two best tennis players of today lasted almost four hours without nine minutes and went down in history as the longest match played over two sets with a tiebreak in the decisive one.
Both players pulled off some great shots. After the Spaniard’s accurate two-handed backhand in the first set, the Serb applauded his racket appreciatively. A few minutes later, when Alcaraz conjured a beautiful lob, Djokovic, with his back turned, gave a thumbs up in appreciation.
The Spaniard won the exciting first set and started the second one very well. In addition, Djokovic helped him with three double faults in a row, giving his opponent a break.
The Serb looked like he was at the bottom. The heat was bothering him, he was cooling his head with a wet towel. At the beginning of the second set, he requested a medical consultation, he was given a pill, his blood pressure was measured…
He went on to challenge his 20-year-old opponent at every exchange until the set went to a tiebreaker. Alacaraz had a match point in it, he didn’t use it and Djokovic equalized. In the third set, the Serb broke his opponent’s serve in the seventh game and immediately confirmed the break at 5:3.
It didn’t look good with the Spaniard, he deflected two match points on his own serve. Djokovic had two more in the tenth game, but he also missed them and it was 5:5. Both the tenth and eleventh games, in which Alcaraz struggled to hold serve, lasted ten endless minutes!
The third set also reached a tiebreak, in which Djokovic already led 3:0, but Alcaraz returned to the match once more. The key moment at 4:4 was handled better by the Serb, he pushed the Spaniard to an unforced error and then served to win the match.
After the match, happy Djokovic tore his T-shirt on his body, took it off and threw it into the audience. He was so exhausted that he barely wrote a note on the camera with a marker.
“It was one of the hardest matches I’ve played in my life. An incredible battle. We were both down and up several times,” he said in the first interview on the court.
He spoke appreciatively about the opponent’s game several times. “You really never give up, in any exchange. As they say, the Spanish never die,” he said towards Alcaraz, who laughed.
Another attractive duel between these players could happen at the US Open, which starts in a week.
2023-08-21 01:37:12
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