Carlos Alcaraz’s Wimbledon final and how to lose a Grand Slam title for the first time – The New York Times

Tennis
THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, LONDON — Forgive Carlos Alcaraz for walking onto Centre Court with little doubt about winning his third consecutive title at Wimbledon and his sixth Grand Slam title.
He knows nothing else. He’d played five Grand Slam finals over the past three years and he had won them all. He beat Novak Djokovic, the greatest player of the modern era, twice on this grass. The first time, he ended his long reign as the king of Wimbledon. He beat Jannik Sinner, the world No. 1, five weeks ago on the red clay of Roland Garros.
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Roger Federer won his first seven Grand Slam finals before losing to Rafael Nadal in Paris in 2006. That record felt within reach. Alcaraz had mostly rolled through his last three matches, hitting that level of seeming invincibility that he’d found the past two years here and in Paris, on the organic surfaces, where his unmatched touch and athleticism help him reign supreme.
Sinner had never played a Wimbledon final before. He’d never walked onto Centre Court on the last Sunday. He’d never felt the size of the moment that sport’s most illustrious tournament always brings. Royalty sitting right above the back fence. An unmatched level of fame and tennis immortality just a few sets away.
He was also staring down a nasty streak. Alcaraz had beaten Sinner five consecutive times, the last of them in the worst possible way, when the Spaniard came back from three championship points down in the fourth set at Roland Garros before storming back to win in five sets and five and a half hours.
If anything could make a player feel invincible, this was it. And through most of the first hour on Sunday, Sinner gave Alcaraz little reason to believe that anything would change. He played a middling set, landing only 55 percent of his first serves.
It was Alcaraz, though, who fell behind early, under the warm, late afternoon sun of southwest London. Somehow, he still walked away with the first set, stealing it by winning the last point with a flurry of wondrous tennis. A squash shot from the tramlines and then a sprint across the court for a defensive, arcing backhand slice that turned into a winner. The crowd exploded for him for the first time all afternoon. His finger flicked at his ear. He was off to the races.
Except he wasn’t. It was as though in that moment, Sinner had said enough was enough. Nearly two years of defeats in a rivalry that was becoming a little one-sided had to come to an end. Alcaraz played a loose game at the second set to go down a break, then spent the rest of it in control, but behind. Just a glimmer of hope from the Italian would have been enough to let him in for a two-set lead. Sinner did not offer one.
And so over the next two hours, Sinner lifted, especially with his serve, and for the first time in a Grand Slam final, Alcaraz couldn’t. Sinner went on the attack, and didn’t stop attacking until his arms were in the air. He barely let Alcaraz’s elite defense, his ability to steal points and his grass-court variety come to the party.
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“He was pushing me to the limit in every point, so mentally sometimes it’s really tough to maintain good focus or a good level during the whole match when you see the opponent just playing such great tennis,” Alcaraz said.
“At some points, I didn’t know what I had to do in the match because from the baseline I was feeling he was better than me, and I couldn’t do anything about it.”
Alcaraz knew so much of the frustration came down to his serve. Sinner was crushing his second serve, pushing into the court and sending him on the chase. His much-improved first serve won him plenty of points and bailed him out of plenty of ropey games. But the second serve didn’t save Alcaraz in the way it saved Sinner, who hit big and hit the lines on big points when missing would have meant losing them.
“It was really difficult when you are feeling that you’re just defending all the time and running from side to side all the time,” Alcaraz said.
Darren Cahill, one of Sinner’s coaches, said the Wimbledon final, like so many big tennis matches, was a match of “who was going to step up in the big moment and make something happen.
“At Roland Garros it was Carlos, and today it was Jannik.”
When it was over, Alcaraz suddenly had to play the role that others have had to play in front of him, five times over. The slow walk to the net, the congratulatory hug, and accepting the commiserations.
He set down his rackets and put on his Nike cardigan. And then he took his seat beside the court and settled in for that most awkward tennis exercise: watching someone else climb through the stands for the celebratory hugs with family and friends and coaches.
And then waiting an endless wait for the attendants to set up for the awards ceremony. Waiting for Catherine, Princess of Wales, handing him a smallish plate rather than a massive trophy.
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The only thing comparable for Alcaraz was his loss last summer at the 2024 Paris Olympics, when Djokovic edged him out in two tiebreak sets that took nearly three hours to play. He broke down in a post-match interview. He wasn’t himself for months. Exhausted, burned out, he lost early at the U.S. Open, found a way to win against Sinner in Beijing, and then flamed out of the ATP Tour Finals, under the weather and out of form.
Alcaraz said Sunday he had learned from that experience. He had let the Olympic loss linger with him, focusing on the wrong things. He dwelled on having lost, rather than having made the final. Rather than having played one of the great best-of-three set matches in the history of the men’s game, and rather than having made Djokovic find a level he rarely had in his career.
He found his first loss in a Grand Slam final easier, because he could take plenty of pride in having played it.
“I just want to keep the good moments and trying to forget the bad moments,” he said. “I just want to think, ‘OK, I just played a final in a Grand Slam, and trying to forget that I lost it.”He insisted he was not in a bad way.
“I’m just happy,” he said. “I’m smiling because in my head it was about playing the final and being grateful for that.”
The best tennis players often say that one of their most important qualities is having a short memory. Sinner showed Sunday he has one.
There’s another Grand Slam in six weeks, and a decent chance that Alcaraz and Sinner may face off once more in the final. “They’re definitely several levels above everyone right now,” Djokovic said of them after his second consecutive semifinal loss to Sinner at a Grand Slam.
Their rivalry tests their strokes and speed and power and touch like nothing else in the sport. Now, it’s also a test of who can have the shortest memory.
(Top photo: Julian Finney / Getty Images)
Matthew Futterman is an award-winning veteran sports journalist and the author of two books, “Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed” and “Players: How Sports Became a Business.”Before coming to The Athletic in 2023, he worked for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Star-Ledger of New Jersey and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is currently writing a book about tennis, “The Cruelest Game: Agony, Ecstasy and Near Death Experiences on the Pro Tennis Tour,” to be published by Doubleday in 2026. Follow Matthew on Twitter @mattfutterman

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