It would be his last, it turned out. Alcaraz ended the set with two service winners, broke early in the third, and sprinted to the finish line. He would finish with twice as many winners as Djokovic, 31 to 15.
“It wasn’t the best level of the tournament for me,” Alcaraz said. [But I kept] a good level from the beginning until the last point. I served pretty well today, which I thought was really important.”
“I tried to play a really physical match.”
Djokovic probably won’t enjoy hearing that Alcaraz didn’t play his best, and that he only served “pretty well.” But that last comment, that he wanted to make the match “really physical,” shows that Alcaraz knows what matters against an older opponent like Djokovic. And he knows that, at 22, he always has that advantage in his back pocket.
Just as important, he knows he has won 44 of 46, hasn’t dropped a set in New York, and is into his second US Open final.
