Monday, July 15, 2019

Wimbledon 2019

Over the last few years, the common question about tennis' Big Three - Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic - has been how much longer they would stay at the top and who would eventually take over. So many young guns have showed up over the last several years who had the talent to potentially challenge them and more recently, the big three have faced some big losses against the next generation players such as Alexander Zverev and Stefanos Tsitsipas. That said, the Grand Slam tournaments continue to be the domain of the Big Three, as they have combined to win the last 11 majors, including this recently concluded Wimbledon. In fact, all three made it to the semifinals, with the two top seeds Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer battling it out for the title.




In the end, top seed and world number 1 Novak Djokovic produced an incredibly gusty and mentally strong performance to edge past Roger Federer in a tremendously dramatic five-set win. Novak Djokovic have to save two match points - and he did it on Roger's serve! - and the final had to be decided by the first-ever fifth set tie-breaker in Wimbledon Singles play, a change implemented at the tournament this year. Novak now has five Wimbledon titles and 16th Grand Slam singles titles. In the total Grand Slam count, he is only 4 behind Roger and 2 behind Rafa. With no other consistent challengers to the big three and with Djokovic continuing his mastery over Roger and Rafa (he leads his head-to-head records against both of them), he may very well surpass both and end up with the record for most Grand Slam titles. It will be interesting to see how things turn out over the next few (or even several) years.




On the women's side, Simona Halep trounced Serena Williams in straight sets, 6-2 6-2, to claim her first Wimbledon title and her second major win (she won the French Open last year). Simona played a tremendous match, retrieving so many balls and forcing Serena to hit one more shot. In this high stakes final, Serena just couldn't sustain her shot-making and she couldn't stay with an inspired Simona. How inspired was she? She hit only three unforced errors the entire match. That is a record for the fewest unforced errors in a ladies' singles final. While many people were disappointed that they didn't get to see Serena tie Margaret Court's record, I was very happy for Simona who looked to be in disbelief when she won and couldn't contain her joy.




Congratulations, Novak Djokovic and Simona Halep!

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