History was on the line for both superstars in a highly anticipated final that ensured a rather underwhelming Australian Open ended with a flourish.<\/p>\n
Following their gruelling semi-finals on Friday, neither player trained on Saturday, leaving everyone wondering how they would pull up on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Djokovic pointed out Alcaraz had the advantage in that regard, given the 16-year age difference, but the veteran made a mockery of that gap with a blistering start.<\/p>\n
Moving sharply, Djokovic used his superior tennis IQ to carefully construct points in a way which Alcaraz could not compute – similar to how he discombobulated the Spaniard in last year’s quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
A locked-in Djokovic comfortably held serve thanks to the precision of his opening shot and accuracy of his groundstrokes, laying the platform to break Alcaraz for a 3-1 lead.<\/p>\n
Continuing to take angles and space away from his opponent, Djokovic comfortably consolidated for a 4-1 lead and broke again to seal the opening set.<\/p>\n
“That was one of the best sets I’ve played in the last couple years,” Djokovic said.<\/p>\n
How long he could maintain this level was the next question.<\/p>\n
A lot of emphasis had been placed on Djokovic’s good fortune over the fortnight, but his luck ran out in the third game of the second set when a remarkable net cord helped Alcaraz break.<\/p>\n
The manner was brutal and, coming at 1-1 15-15, was crucial in shifting momentum.<\/p>\n
From that point, Djokovic’s serve lacked the same precision and his groundstrokes were not as punchy.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz won four of the next five games to level the match, keeping his foot on the pedal to break twice in the third set and lead.<\/p>\n
“He made few easy mistakes that he hadn’t had in the first set, so that gave me a lot of calm and trust,” Alcaraz said.<\/p>\n
“I stayed mentally strong, trying to be solid and I changed a little bit tactically.”<\/p>\n
Djokovic, though, is not a man to be beaten easily.<\/p>\n
He fought off six break points in the second game of the fourth set, then created a chance of his own on Alcaraz’s serve in the ninth game.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz kept his cool in a baseline duel with Djokovic finally pushing a forehand long – and it proved vital.<\/p>\n
The exchanges continued to be intense as the set entered the business end, but Djokovic blinked first.<\/p>\n
After being rocked by a deep Alcaraz return at 15-30, he clattered another forehand into the net on championship point.<\/p>\n
“[It was] a bad miss at 4-4 and break point – my forehand broke down in important moments,” Djokovic added.<\/p>\n
“One or two shots can change the momentum of the match and switch things around, which happened.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"History was on the line for both superstars in a highly anticipated final that ensured a rather underwhelming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-447327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}