Earlier than each tennis main, the organizers assemble the bracket. Some randomness is baked into this course of, however the first two steps are everlasting: On the prime of the draw, they write within the No. 1 seed, and on the backside, they write within the No. 2 seed. There are 126 different gamers lurking between them, however on this yr’s males’s area for the U.S. Open, all these names blur into the backdrop.
The identify on prime is Carlos Alcaraz, defending champ and 20-year-old boy-king of tennis; on the underside is 36-year-old Novak Djokovic, who has achieved extra within the sport than any man ever. They’ll meet solely within the remaining. Alcaraz and Djokovic have performed thrice this summer season, leaving sickeningly vivid highlights of their wake. Not because the peak of the Federer-Nadal rivalry has a serious felt so outlined by its prime two seeds.
The distinction right here is the timeframe. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have been contemporaries, set to conflict for 15 years, an abundance of mind-melting riches. However the roiling rivalry between Alcaraz and Djokovic is treasured, as a result of one man is on his means up (as exhausting as it’s to think about him bettering on his current mastery), and the opposite has begun his gradual descent (as exhausting as it’s to think about his supremacy ever fading). Growing old means this rivalry can solely final for therefore lengthy. Each match, just like the three-set traditional Djokovic received within the Cincinnati Masters remaining this previous weekend, appears like a present.
Each tennis rivalry has its personal taste, relying on how the gamers’ idiosyncrasies mesh collectively, drawing particular strains of genius out of one another. Djokovic and Alcaraz are each such well-rounded gamers that it quantities to a maddeningly broad mandate for each males: Keep world-historic offense and protection for so long as you’ll be able to muster, push your endurance to the intense, and pray that the maths shakes out in your favor.
“The sensation that I’ve on the courtroom jogs my memory of going through Nadal once we have been at our prime,” Djokovic mentioned in a press convention after their most up-to-date encounter. “Every level is a trouble, every level is a battle—you are feeling such as you’re not going to get 5 free factors in your entire match.” Athletically, Djokovic may need fallen a notch from his apex a decade in the past, however he is nonetheless fast and supple sufficient to carry as much as a ferocious man-child with much less mileage on his legs. Time has sanded away a few of the Serb’s bodily benefits, but it surely’s granted him contemporary technical and psychological ones.
The clearest distinction between the 2 is in fashion. Through the years, Djokovic has streamlined his tennis to an everlasting template. He begins factors with the tour’s best-ever return-of-serve, and a serve lethal in accuracy if not in uncooked energy. In rallies, he prefers a steadier, attritional method, trusting in his deep photographs and cautious change of path. It isn’t all the time highlight-reel fare, besides to an knowledgeable eye, however that does not matter. There is no meddling with the method that has received him 23 Slams and 39 Masters titles.
Alcaraz is the extra experimental participant, vulnerable to rattle the rhythm of a rally with a brash artistic danger—a drop shot, a freakish angle, an ambush on the web. Once they play, the younger Spaniard should check his ingenious offense in opposition to the hardiest defender ever. At this stage, Djokovic has nothing left to be taught; Alcaraz appears to yank a brand new trick out of his pocket each three days. Though they don’t seem to be precisely master-and-apprentice with respect to techniques, they’re when it comes to absolute ability stage. Every time they meet, they produce factors that would belong solely to them. For proof, take a look at their finest collaborations from final Sunday’s bout:
Their head-to-head file is now break up at 2-2, and three of these conferences occurred within the final three months, which has introduced their rivalry to the middle of the tour’s internet of narratives. Within the first matchup, Might 2022 on clay in Madrid, Alcaraz was a 19-year-old who’d simply abruptly seized management of the tour. He had pulled off a three-set defeat of Nadal, the king of clay, and he dispatched Djokovic in a tough three-set semifinal. However that wasn’t one of the best tennis that late-empire Djokovic has to supply. He was sluggish to seek out his type in 2022, having missed the yr’s first main after a Kafkaesque deportation saga in Australia, and burped up just a few uncharacteristic losses heading into Madrid. This primary assembly was an appetizer, a younger rebel besting a legend in B-minus type, in a shorter best-of-three format.
Alcaraz and Djokovic wouldn’t cross paths for the remainder of 2022. The second assembly was this previous June, once more on clay, with the upper stakes of the French Open. In that semifinal match, Alcaraz met the complete brunt of his scariest opponent thus far: Djokovic, deep in a serious, having already honed his management over the course of the event. For Alcaraz, the toll was as psychic because it was corporeal. After two psychedelic units, the 20-year-old suffered full-body cramps. He misplaced his legs, and the rest of the match was a formality. After his four-set loss, Alcaraz chalked up the cramps to not inadequate conditioning, vitamin or hydration, however to the strain of the second. “I began the match actually nervous. The stress of the primary set, second set, it was actually intense,” he mentioned in post-match press.
By the point they met once more, 5 weeks later at Wimbledon, Alcaraz appeared to have settled the issue of stress. He additionally appeared to have solved grass-court tennis regardless of minimal expertise on the floor. Proper now Alcaraz is tennis’s quickest learner, a smiley prodigy who appears to extract long-term knowledge from each set he performs. With simply 46 hours of match play, he had internalized the nuances of motion on slippery grass sufficient to win the floor’s greatest title in opposition to its seven-time champ. In that Wimbledon remaining, Alcaraz held an distinctive stage of tennis all through 5 units. Cramps didn’t mar this almost five-hour struggle. Djokovic has mentioned on a number of events that he savors the best-of-five format in opposition to youthful gamers, safe in his potential to outlast them no matter an early deficit. However Alcaraz’s newfound endurance allowed him to outlive all of the totally different iterations of Djokovic that emerge over the course of a serious remaining. Alcaraz mentioned forward of the match that it will be the “finest second of his life, most likely,” and he left with the trophy. It is exhausting to be shocked by something Alcaraz does anymore, however given the disparity of their expertise on grass, this win met the brink.
By the point they acquired to Sunday’s Cincinnati remaining, there was little thriller left between these two, tactically talking. This match did current a brand new environmental adversary: the Ohio-in-August dew level. Djokovic was in disrepair after Alcaraz received the primary set. He shouted at his field for a creatine drink, had his pulse checked in a medical timeout, and took refuge in an icy towel. Alcaraz went up a break within the second set, wanting like he may carry that margin to the end line, solely to surrender the lead. He noticed a match level within the tiebreak, however Djokovic nullified it with a web method. Within the third set, it was Alcaraz’s flip to creep again from a break deficit—saving a Djokovic match level with a nutty forehand slap—and push the match to a deciding tiebreak. There, the ugly specter of cramps returned. Alcaraz’s proper hand seized up throughout a prolonged rally, when he was pressured to hit a gawky, doomed forehand with two arms. His sources depleted, Alcaraz took greater dangers on the remaining factors, however could not regular the scoreboard in time. Djokovic received 5-7, 7-6(7), 7-6(4), and Alcaraz wept on the conclusion. Though it was performed on a fast hard-court floor, which lends itself to shorter factors, the three:49 remaining was the longest best-of-three ATP remaining because the format was set in 1990. If each level was a trouble and battle, as Djokovic put it, right here have been 261 of them, on the highest stage humanly doable.
Djokovic has made no secret of the truth that he’s sticking round tennis to build up its greatest titles. For the previous couple of seasons, he hadn’t met a lot resistance on this mission. Nadal, presently on an harm hiatus, intends to retire subsequent season. There aren’t any different gamers within the area who can persistently trigger him this a lot woe. In a reasonably direct sense, Alcaraz’s potential to impede him from these large titles may affect Djokovic’s resolution to maintain touring yr after yr. Ultimately, time will tip the stability in favor of Alcaraz, who will spend the next decade straining in direction of Djokovic’s statistical feats. This could’t final without end, however from the attitude of leisure alone, I would take one other dozen of those—hopefully starting with one other dollop three Sundays from now, within the U.S. Open males’s remaining.
Correction: A earlier model of this put up mentioned Djokovic had eight Wimbledon titles; he has seven.
