2023-08-21 02:41:19
With Novak Djokovic on the canvas, vaporized by the heat and with the doctors taking his blood pressure, Carlos Alcaraz did not give the final blow. He was one point away from adding his fifth Masters 1,000, the first in Cincinnati, but he did not finish off the Serbian, reborn after solving the temperature problem and who, despite his threat of withdrawal, completed an inhuman comeback in three hours and 48 minutes (5-7, 7-6 (7) and 7-6 (4)), being the longest Masters 1,000 final in history at three sets.
The Serb was 5-7 and 2-4 and also saved a match point in the tiebreaker of the second set, but one way or another he survived to triumph for the third time in Cincinnati and to get even, even a little, for what happened in the Wimbledon final a little over a month ago.
The Murcian started doubtfully, with a ‘break’ against which presaged that Djokovic, with less wear and tear throughout the week, was going to take revenge for what happened at Wimbledon. The man from Belgrade had his peak with 4-2 15-0, at which point the game turned around thanks to a setback parallel to Alcaraz’s line. Djokovic took off his hat before the blow and did not hesitate to applaud the Spanish gesture. What he did not know is that it had been his sentence.
Alcaraz won ten of the next twelve points. He equalized the game and turned the sensations around. Djokovic was out of place and disoriented, with a significant intolerance to heat and even yelling at his bench asking for some kind of solution in the form of liquid.
His look, every time he put the cooling towel on his shoulders and head, was that of Djokovic between 2007 and 2011, the one who suffered from respiratory problems in long matches and who melted in the heat.
When Alcaraz, with another sensational backhand on the line, made it 7-5, Djokovic disappeared through the changing room tunnel. He was outside for about ten minutes, being treated, breathing and calming down, but there was no solution for the bird he was suffering from. After giving up his serve, with three double faults in a row, something unimaginable for the 23-time Grand Slam winner, he fell back on his bench and asked for the doctors to come in, who with a worried face took his blood pressure and gave him medicine. .
“It’s hot, we are a fucking rock,” Juan Carlos Ferrero told his pupil, who did not lose concentration before Djokovic’s tennis fainting. Despite the fact that it seemed that a withdrawal was possible, Djokovic held on, as Alcaraz did in the fateful semifinals at Roland Garros, and did not give up. To the point that he returned to the game. There was no explanation for what happened. Djokovic went from dead to dangerous again and not only regained the deficit, but took the second set to a tiebreaker and, after saving a championship point down, won it.
Seeing is believing, Djokovic, who minutes before had a blood pressure monitor on his finger, had won the set. Alcaraz reacted by hitting his bench several times, with rage, and once he calmed down he asked the physio for a problem with a finger. Djokovic, like at the end of the first set, went to the bathroom again. Despite his delay, there was no warning for the Serb, who started the final set with a small moral advantage, where he was the first to have breaking balls. Six, two in the fifth game and four in the seventh, all of them saved by Alcaraz. Until the seventh came and the Spaniard was hooked on a setback in the net.
Djokovic held his hands to a 5-3 lead and enjoyed two match points off Alcaraz’s serve, the second saved by the Spaniard in incredible fashion. He held the serve and transferred the pressure to Djokovic, who wasted another two match points and lost serve against a fierce defense from Murcia.
Start over, 5-5, and suffer again, because Alcaraz had to deactivate two ‘break’ balls before securing the ‘tie break’ in which the title was decided.
He started it with a double fault, a very long lost exchange and a hasty return. 3-0 against and cramps in one hand. No problem, he matched it. He made it to 4-4 alive, but Djokovic played the last three points perfectly and beat the Spaniard.
Djokovic, the reborn, did with his third Cincinnati, fourth title of the year, Masters 1,000 number 39 and equalized the rivalry with Alcaraz (2-2). The Serbian will not be number one at the US Open, but he is just 20 points behind Murcia, who will defend his title at Flushing Meadows and with it 2,000 units, against a Djokovic who did not play in the tournament last year due to covid restrictions.
#Djokovic #reborn #mail