Novak Djokovic had dominated all of the most significant moments of the first half of this tennis season.
After winning his 10th Australian Open, he emerged with the Roland Garros crown, his 23rd Grand Slam tournament title, tied for the career record.
A win at Wimbledon, on tennis’s most hallowed ground, would have put him three-quarters of the way to becoming the first man to achieve a calendar Grand Slam in 54 years.
Carlos Alcaraz, surprising the tennis world with a championship match victory over Djokovic on the slick Wimbledon grass, a surface assumed to have been the Spaniard’s kryptonite.
But when the final was over, as Alcaraz lofted the greatest trophy in tennis skyward, a budding tug of war had morphed into a full-blown rivalry for men’s tennis supremacy.
Persons:
Novak Djokovic, Roland Garros, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Carlito, a.k.a, Carlos Alcaraz
Organizations:
Wimbledon, Djokovic