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Tennis fanatics should brace themselves for the era of Carlos Alcaraz Garfia, writes Nicolette Lategan.
It had been misconstrued as the battle of the ages. In fact, it is the age of Alcaraz that has come. As yet, he stands alone in that great battle between the old and the new.
Sunday heralded its arrival, a birth that has had the world at bated breath for some time as it sensed a dawn rising.
One might say events at the All England Club have complicated Novak Djokovic’s Grand Slam procession somewhat.
On the other hand, the Serbian has always been better when faced with a worthy rival to keep the glint in the eye gleaming, to keep him honest. A rivalry worth fighting another day for.
They say Djokovic takes his opponents to a dark place, an underworld where the soul comes face to face with its own significance, before the outcome is finally settled.
READ | Staggering 5th set statistics prove Alcaraz was a deserved winner in Wimbledon final
If the opponent surfaces, more often than not having experienced a metamorphosis along that hero’s journey, rarely against the Serb is he the victor. Many have tried and failed.
Djokovic, not by choice, has had to play the villain, a necessary evil as a misunderstood Hades among the Hercules. And as the last man standing of the big three, the dark lord’s sceptre still hovers over an ending age.
The men’s singles final at Wimbledon was no different.
Enter a boy from Murcia, Spain, at 20 years old, fully fledged in physique, psyche and temperament beyond his years, and armed with, as they say, the complete game.
Djokovic himself has alluded to Carlos Alcaraz’s alchemy as being in possession of Federer's prose, Nadal's rhythmic violence, and the Serbian’s unflappable inventiveness at will.
Except, Alcaraz, with the jib of a werewolf pup whose friendly smiles belie a ferocious streak, makes it all look especially audacious.
After Sunday, the comparisons can stop. He is Alcaraz, first of his name.
As Djokovic observed after the match: "I haven't played a player like him, ever."
The most famous uncle to come out of Spain, Uncle Toni, said earlier this year that Alcaraz struck him as being akin to a young Roger Federer who had a while to wait till one Rafael Nadal came to crash the party. Certainly, there remains many a pretender from the next crop.
The first meeting of import between Djokovic and Alcaraz came at Roland Garros in May in the absence of the one true king of clay. And there was an air of the pre-ordained.
In those initial two sets the exchanges were taut, brilliant, breathless. Alcaraz never appeared afraid. Until it suddenly stopped.
Had things gone on in that fashion for much longer, someone would have succumbed from the exertion, and at that point all bets were on the 36-year-old, although the fittest man on tour, rather than betting against the endless barrels of energy in one born sixteen years after the Serbian.
After two sets where Djokovic’s forehand thundered louder than we are accustomed to, and cat and mouse play at its most outrageous as he was hell-bent on meeting the exuberance of his young challenger’s unbridled power, nobody was more surprised than Alcaraz when the cramps took hold.
Not yet, an otherworldly voice may have whispered to the enchanted ear. There was still the matter of a 23rd Grand Slam title to settle in France.
If anything, before his body had betrayed him on Court Philippe Chatrier, Alcaraz met each moment not with fear but with the wonderment of a new-born in the full flight of discovery of the world it inhabits.
It was not dissimilar to the look on Djokovic grizzled face when he was stopped in his tracks after Sunday's defeat by the smiling face of his young son, Stefan, peering down at him from the player's box.
Perhaps Alcaraz's undoing in Paris lay in the virgin territory he had entered. He had come out the blocks too fast. And it may even be that Djokovic inwardly sighed in relief.
The young Spaniard, though mildly cowed, had taken a good look at the incumbent on the other side of the net. As it turns out, it would be at Wimbledon where the reckoning would come to pass.
The five-set thriller that unfolded before the eyes of the Spanish King Felipe in the so-called English garden saw a more considered approach from the young man, but no less unencumbered – perhaps in the first set - despite the magnitude of this fine day.
He did not flinch. It seemed the wind that swirled in bothersome huffs was sent to trouble the Serb a tad more, or was that fine line of worry on the brow of the 23-time Grand Slam champion imagined?
As they entered the deciding set, still the young Alcaraz did not falter. And then came a passage of play in which the stuffing of a true champion revealed itself.
The final game in the fifth set did not show a young upstart in the throes of second thoughts, intimidated, in an occasion too big. It was only the Djok of all ages standing guard at the gate.
There was none of it. Instead, Alcaraz’s chest swelled, his strokes flowed in glorious wingspans as he rose to meet the moment.
The age of Carlos Alcaraz Garfia has arrived. And with it an intriguing new rivalry worthy of a final chapter for the greatest men’s player by numbers. Djokovic, too, has had a good look. Let the latest of the chronicles commence.
