Wimbledon Sinkaraz era

On a tennis court, that’s not enough to win. You have to keep winning. It’s the greatest of all time, not even enough. The newcomer is here. In early June, at the French Open, Carlos Alcaraz played his life-long game, one of the best ever and was crowned the champion. Just five weeks later, at Wimbledon, he had to try to do it again, against Jannik Sinner, the same man who almost defeated him.

Wimbledon’s central court is a traditional monument, repeated. When Sina and Alcaraz walked into the grass on Sunday afternoon, they walked into the shadow of four men, winning the sixty-nine-year-old Grand Slam title between them, just as those men were covered by the legends in front of them. Sina and Alkaraz won the past six majors together, and that day, one of them will win seventh place. The crowd was filled with pink cheeks, trailblazers and mid-calf long dresses in a way that performed a specific version of the past. Once, when Champagne Cork flew to the court, the game stopped. The referee politely asks the crowd not to pop up bottles when the player serves. This is a joke – only at Wimbledon! But it’s not only ridiculous. It is also unrestrained to the extent of the seriousness of what happened in court.

What the crowd wants and expects is history: a game of age, it is a game that will fit into the game that happened a month ago. This is an impossible task, even for two players who are used to so much pressure. For most of the first set, the show was at a high level, but not special. But, at the end of the collection, it is: a series of unimaginable shots. From the set point of 4-5, the Sinner hit a solid serve and then tear a wide forehand to drive Alcalasra towards the group stage. Alcaraz hit a deep defensive shot and quickly recovered, dancing on the court on the team’s small steps and running around on the backhand, hitting the forehand in the front. It was a nice shot but opened the courtroom for sinners, who had to hit a low, flat crossroads. Alcaraz slid ten feet across the grass, entered the defensive forehand slice and somehow quickly returned to the center of the baseline. Then the sinner cleverly made him wrong with his reply. But Alcaraz kept his low profile, his legs immediately lit up on the grass, trying his best to grab his balance and hit the forehand hard on the court. The sinner smashed the running run there, and it was the winner at any time. Alcaraz sprinted and glided to block the ball, but it was already behind him, but had enough strength and wrist control to make the ball float across the net and die in the bounce. Set to Alcaraz. At the second set point, it was the sinner’s turn to create a miracle – a running forehand is so hard and low, and at such an angle, I whispered to curse when I saw it.

That’s it competewhich contains two points: Alkaraz’s creativity and improvisational feeling; sinner’s shattering technology glory. The duel seems natural and almost inevitable. But what followed wasn’t that striking: the winning players won. The suffocating wind on the ground and the speed of the camera began to move Alcaraz out of his unpredictable mode into something softer and more normal. Alcaraz’s first-time service has been improving and began to waver, and the sinner can suddenly start when he returns. On the other hand, the sinner’s service became more precise, with clouds of chalk dust emitting as the lines were waving, and his final 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 victory, his first victory against Alcaraz since 2023, began to become increasingly certain. This is clinical, and that’s not to say it’s not pretty.

The Sinners have the length and elegance of an NBA guard. His movements had a fluidity that highlighted the coolness of his manner. Alcaraz burst; they complement each other together. Alcaraz plays a wide variety of – moist ground strokes, feathery drips. But the descent shot on Sunday is not a spontaneous miracle that sometimes occurs, and the inspiration for Alcaraz seems to flourish is not entirely present – perhaps respected for the courage and mastery shown by Sinner. At the end of the game, the sinner seemed relieved, happy and distinctive.

It was a weird game, turning to brilliant and frustrating. Many top players have appeared before week two, victims of the slick grass vicissitudedude, in some cases their parity and depth as well. Some of them talk about their frustration, trapped in the ruthless cycle of the tour, which is difficult to achieve. Even the best people must be used to disappointment. “So bad, you know?” Aryna Sabalenka, the first woman, told reporters after losing to Amanda Anisimova in the semifinals. “You always feel like you want to die – you don’t want to exist anymore, this is the end of your life.”

There is a huge tradition in movements driven by fear or hatred from this feeling. But at least the finalists seem to have gotten rid of that view. Anisimova faces extreme burnout after her father’s death. She barely made the top five hundred shortly after she returned from the start of the 2024 Australian Open, but she talked about how much she likes the game now. After Igaświątek’s dominance in the grass surged, she finally gave up her dominance over clay and lost in a mysterious way, she talked about the pleasure of not expecting. Nevertheless, during the Women’s Finals, when Anisimova was clearly overwhelmed by the size of the moment, a measure of how much she was beaten 6-0, 6-0 in an hour.

“I suffered a very difficult loss in Paris,” Sina said after winning at the ceremony on Sunday. “But, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how you win or lose a big game. It’s the kind of cliché that athletes have been saying. The sinner seems to mean it, and rely on it. He was almost defeated in the quarterfinals when Grigor Dimitrov took the first two sets and got the game before blowing his chest muscles. The sinner was lucky to escape, he knew. He said he didn’t see it as a victory.

What matters is: One person walks away with the trophy, and the other suffers. This is very important and we seem to need success to justify the desire to not need it. However, watching the sinner and Alcaraz perform such a display on the edge of the limit, there is a glimpse of different paradigms of competition, a competition not subject to super attacks or hostility, but something that is able to belong to both competitors immediately. I thought to let the crowd drink champagne. Just give me this and it feels very new. ♦