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Wimbledon is over for another year, and after a fortnight of thrilling tennis action, including two cliffhanger men’s semi-finals and a near-perfect comeback for Serena Williams, we have two worthy champions.
A lot of water had passed under the bridge since Novak Djokovic conquered tennis’ Mount Everest when he not only completed his set of Grand Slam titles, but also became the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to hold all four major titles simultaneously by lifting the Coupe des Mousquetaires in 2016.
Since that glorious day in Paris, the Djoker’s world came crashing down as he not only relinquished each title one by one, but also suffered an elbow injury at Wimbledon last year, which forced him to call time on his 2017 season in order to recover.
Lacklustre results in the first half of this season saw him drop out of the world’s top 20 for the first time since October 2006, and many believed that his best tennis had finally gone beyond him.
After a quarter-final loss to Marco Cecchinato at the French Open, the 31-year-old said in his post-match press conference that he didn’t know whether he was going to participate in the grass court season or not.
He decided to press ahead, reaching the final at Queens where he lost to the top seed, Marin Cilic, in three sets.
Despite being ranked 21st in the world entering Wimbledon, he was seeded 12th by the All England Club’s seeding committee in recognition of his good record on the surface in recent years, which included title wins in 2011, 2014 and 2015.
Novak Djokovic of Serbia (Photo by TPN/Getty Images)
While all the focus of the tennis world was on Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, who took out the Australian and French Opens respectively earlier this year, Djokovic quietly went about his business, storming through the early rounds with minimal fuss.
He proceeded to reach the semi-finals where he would face off against long-time rival Rafael Nadal, taking a two-sets-to-one lead when play was called off on Friday night (local time).
When play resumed on Saturday, the Djoker dropped the fourth set to be forced into a fifth and deciding set, but would hold his nerve, saving several break points before breaking the Spaniard to love in the eighteenth game to win the final set 10-8 and advance to his first major final in nearly two years.
There, he faced Kevin Anderson, who won two consecutive cliffhangers, first saving a match point to upset Roger Federer in the quarter-finals, and then overcoming John Isner in the longest semi-final in Wimbledon history with the final set lasting 50 games, to take his place in his second major final.
Despite expectations of a close match, it proved to be anything but, with Djokovic breaking early in the opening set en route to taking the opening set 6-2.
He took the second by the same scoreline before the third proved to be the most competitive; Anderson held a set point in the tenth game, but the Serb would hold his serve and eventually force a tiebreak, dominating it 7-3.
The match ended with the South African sending a return into the net, and so Djokovic had broken his two-year Grand Slam title drought, and climbed back into the world’s top ten in the process.
It was his third straight-sets win in a major final, and first against anyone other than Andy Murray, who was on the receiving end in the 2011 and 2016 Australian Open finals.
The victory also sees him come full circle in the past twelve months, after he suffered the aforementioned elbow injury, which forced him to retire hurt in his quarter-final match against Tomas Berdych, at Wimbledon last year.
After what we have seen from Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal following their own battles with injuries in recent years, one must wonder whether Novak Djokovic has what it takes to emulate his rivals and make a successful return to the top of the rankings in the years to come.
The Serb will have nothing to defend for the rest of the year, putting him in prime position to continue his climb back up the rankings and finish the year strongly.
Speaking of Murray, the Brit has plunged to 839th in the rankings after withdrawing prior to the tournament starting, stating that he wasn’t at the fitness required to compete at five sets.
The two-time Wimbledon champion had missed nearly twelve months after suffering a hip injury during last year’s Championships, in which he was the top seed and defending champion, and eventually underwent surgery for it earlier this year.
Andy Murray in happier times (Photo: AAP)
While Djokovic continues his climb back up the rankings following a long injury spell, for Murray, who was ranked world number one this time last year, the long road back up to the top is just about to begin.
We now switch over to the women’s side of things, where Serena Williams was denied the fairytale finish many tennis fans had been hoping for after she very nearly lost her life following the birth of her daughter, Alexis Olympia O’hanian, last September.
The American, who had been hoping to become the first mother in seven-and-a-half years to win a Grand Slam title, was defeated by Angelique Kerber in what was her tenth Wimbledon final and 30th major final overall.
Although she arrived at the All England Club outside the world’s top 150, many saw her as a sentimental title favourite given the success she has enjoyed at Wimbledon, where she also won the Olympic gold medal in 2012.
But Kerber, contesting her fourth major final, destroyed the script, recording a straight-sets victory to claim her third Grand Slam title and first since the 2016 US Open, and also continuing her career resurgence after a horrid 2017 season saw her finish the year outside the world’s top 20.
The 30-year-old was the highest seed to reach the quarter-finals, after each of the top ten seeds were knocked out within the first four rounds, making this the worst performance by this line-up in Wimbledon history.
Germany’s Angelique Kerber (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
True to form, Kerber then defeated Daria Kasatkina and Jelena Ostapenko to reach her second Wimbledon final, after previously going down to Serena Williams in 2016 in between her title successes at the Australian and US Opens in the same year.
The German becomes just the fifth woman (after Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova, Samantha Stosur and Garbine Muguruza) to defeat the American in a major final, and second after Venus to do it more than once.
She now only needs to win the French Open to complete her set of Grand Slam titles and join Serena and Sharapova as the only active players to have won each of tennis’ four Grand Slam tournaments.
As for the 36-year-old American, the defeat brought to an end what was otherwise another successful return to the All England Club, where she hadn’t lost since 2014 (winning titles in 2015 and 2016 before missing the 2017 tournament due to her pregnancy).
Her comeback is all the more amazing when you consider that, twice in the past eight years, Williams has brushed with death.
Serena Williams of the United States (Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images)
The first close call came after she suffered a serious foot injury when she stepped on some broken glass at a German restaurant days after winning Wimbledon in 2010.
That injury would sideline her for twelve months, though she was able to make a successful comeback, nearly doubling her Grand Slam tally to that point (that Wimbledon title was her 13th major crown) and becoming one of the greatest tennis players in modern history.
Shortly after she won the 2017 Australian Open, she inadvertently posted a photo of herself on Snapchat with the caption “20 weeks” – thus letting the world know, by pure accident, that she was expecting her first child.
Then came the dramatic birth of her daughter in September last year, after which she was bedridden for several weeks after suffering from pulmonary embolism, a condition she also suffered during the aforementioned twelve months she spent on the sidelines between July 2010 and June 2011.
After all those setbacks, she made her comeback earlier this year, and after a few false starts, has now climbed back into the world’s top 30 with a very good chance of finishing the year ranked world number one.
Serena Williams (The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images )
She will head into the US Open in September as one of the title favourites, where a win could see her equal Margaret Court’s all-time record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles after she was denied at the All England Club.
As for Kerber, the win lifts her back into the world’s top ten, and it is a huge confidence boost after she struggled to adapt to the pressures of being a dual Grand Slam champion in 2017.
Most of the world’s top players will now take some time off to recuperate before the US Open series begins in August with important tournaments in Toronto, Montreal and Cincinnati all serving as lead-ups to the year’s final major, which starts on August 27.
And that’s all she wrote for Wimbledon 2018 – many congratulations go to Novak Djokovic and Angelique Kerber, the singles champions, but also most importantly, commiserations to the fallen, Kevin Anderson and Serena Williams.
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