It was a tense final and lived up to its expectations as Serbian Novak Djokovic finally gathered some pace and won his second Wimbledon title and denied Roger Federer.
It was a tense final and lived up to its expectations as Serbian Novak Djokovic finally gathered some pace and won his second Wimbledon title and denied Roger Federer his record eighth by outlasting the Swiss player in five sets on Sunday.
Djokovic wasted a 5-2 lead, and a match point, in the fourth set but held on for a 6-7 (7), 6-4, 7-6 (4), 5-7, 6-4. It was Djokovic’s seventh Grand Slam title and broke a streak of three consecutive losses in major finals and in five of his past six.
In the last set, Djokovic broke in the final game with the help of four mistakes by Federer to seal the win. After the players met at the net, Djokovic went to the middle of the court, knelt down and plucked out a piece of grass and ate it, similar to what he did in 2011 when he won his first title.
The 32-year-old Federer then hit a serve that was ruled out, but he challenged it and the Hawk-Eye replay showed that it hit the line for an ace – one of his 29 in the match. Federer went on to break in the next game before forcing a fifth set. Djokovic had 27 unforced errors in the match while Federer had 29. Djokovic broke Federer four times while the latter converted three of his seven break points. There had been only one service break through the first three sets before a string of three straight in the fourth as Djokovic took a 4-2 lead before holding serve again.
With this Grand Slam victory, Djokovic returns to the top ranking for the first time since last September, toppling over Rafael Nadal, who lost in the fourth round. The Serbian player first rose to No. 1 when he won Wimbledon in 2011, although he was already guaranteed of securing the top ranking even before beating Nadal in that final. Djokovic fell awkwardly in the first game of the second set and called for a trainer immediately after he broke Federer’s serve to take a 2-1 lead.
Federer led 3-0 in the first-set tiebreaker but later had three unforced backhand errors to let Djokovic back into it and had to save a set point when the Serb hit a backhand into the net. Even though Roger Federer might have felt a bit of ‘pain’ inside of him after seeing that elusive Grand Slam wither away from him; the Swiss Ace showed glimpses of his class act.
Even if Novak Djokovic walked away with the title, Roger had won the hearts of many!
