With his commitment to Jannik Sinner resolved, Novak Djokovic lay down on the massage therapist’s stretcher, looked for the television remote and connected to the other semifinal, the second of the day, the one between Carlos Alcaraz (20) and Daniil Medvedev.
The experience has to be an accumulation of stimuli.
While the physiotherapist digs into the champion’s musculature, loosens the contractures and reviews the damaged tissues, the champion explores the weaknesses of Alcaraz and Medvedev (27), finds out what he will find this Sunday, when he takes to the track to play the ninth final of his sports career at Wimbledon.
Is this how you plan to rest? –They have asked Djokovic before, after his victory against Sinner.
“That’s how I plan to rest,” the Serb agreed.
(…)
The rain hammers the retractable roof of the Center Court. This is not the chirimiri of other days: now it rains in abundance and thunder roars, and in the annexed courts the matches are cancelled, one after the other, and in the Center Court, sheltered, the atmosphere is lukewarm.
Neither the rain, nor the warmth of the stage, nor the entity of Medvedev or the commitment grip Alcaraz, who acts as always, directing the tempos of the match and manipulating the adversary, and in 1h50m he knocks down the Russian giant and challenges himself with that Djokovic who has seen everything from the physio stretcher.
Was it a Wimbledon semifinal, the temple of tennis?
And?
(…)
When it subtracts, a moving gale, Alcaraz puts pressure on Medvedev.
And just after 33 minutes, the first set is awarded. He does it after breaking the service of the Russian for the first time, a Russian without a flag who had been banned in the 2022 edition, such are the easements of war, and who now does not know how to overcome the problems posed by the Murcian.
Medvedev leaves, goes to the bathroom, and Alcaraz runs around on the grass while he waits for the Russian, he runs around so as not to cool down, and out of the corner of his eye he contemplates his people, the impassive Juan Carlos Ferrero, the coach who was number 1 in 2003 and who now he watches events from his corner, always with a finger in his mouth.
It takes five minutes for Medvedev to return, perhaps five minutes he has spent contemplating himself in the mirror, deciding what he is going to do, and the storm is not raging in the British countryside or on the green carpet.
Alcaraz believes in himself, he believes more than ever.
He believes so much that now he gives himself highlights, everything that had not been given in the previous rounds, against Chardy, Müller or Jarry, when he had performed at half speed, risking just enough, playing Djokovic: an exchange of volleys with the network, dizzying tap dance, rewards Alcaraz, who thus breaks Medvedev in the second set and is already heading downhill.
There are barely 71 minutes into the game when Medvedev delivers the second set: the Russian has been number 1 in February 2022, and on his resume they show off a title at the US Open (2021) and two Grand Slam finals at the Australian Open, but now its limitations have been exposed, it seems like very little in the face of Alcaraz’s miscellany of resources.
The Spaniard deploys parallels and drop shots and raises the racket after each point, immersed in his mission as he had been on Wednesday, in his generational duel against Rune.
Angry other times, when he challenged the public or faced the chair umpire, now there is no news of Medvedev, perhaps an iceberg, perhaps a tennis player defeated by circumstances, the last exponent of the Next Gen, the generation of Zverev, Tsitsipás , Auger-Aliassime and De Miñaur who has been stuffed, and devoured, by the Big Three and Alcaraz’s puppies, the two eras that will play the throne of Wimbledon tomorrow.