ALCA-RAGE

The 20-year-old Spaniard surpassed Djokovic 1-6, 7-6(6), 6-1, 3-6, 6-4 to win his first Major on grass

- SWAROOP SWAMINATHAN

CARLOS Alcaraz is good, eh. Very, very good. That point would have held water even without the way he married skill and fight inside Centre Court on a sun-kissed July evening. In the years to come, it’s highly likely that this will be the match that people will remember when talking about their first impressions of the wunderkind from El Palmar, a nondescript village near Murcia in southeastern Spain.

It’s very hard to beat Novak Djokovic in the final of a Major (23/35 coming into the final). It’s harder, still, to beat the Serb in five sets in the final of a Major (4-1), especially after losing the first set. The hardest thing, of course, is to take a tie-break off him (15-0 across the last 15 tie-breaks). Alcaraz ticked all of those boxes to hand the 36-year-old his first loss at SW19 since 2016 (in 2017, he retired with an injury after losing the first set).