Will Novak Djokovic get the better of Carlos Alcaraz this time around? | Wimbledon men's final preview

Classic Wimbledon men’s finals tend to beget rematches. Bjorn Borg’s five-set win over John McEnroe in 1980 was followed by McEnroe’s four-set win over Borg in 1981. A year after going the distance to beat Rafael Nadal in 2007, Roger Federer came out on the losing end of another epic against the Spaniard in 2008.

Now, lucky us, Djokovic and Alcaraz have made it three for three. On Sunday they’ll reprise their own five-set final from 2023, which Alcaraz won. In the two cases I cited above, the loser of the first match reversed his fortunes the next year. Should we expect Djokovic to do the same, and get the better of Alcaraz this time around?

Judging by the way he improved over the fortnight, and the way he finished his semifinal win over Lorenzo Musetti, Djokovic has a good shot. By the third set on Friday, he was so confident of victory that he was pretending to be nervous about Musetti’s passing shots going in, laughing and shaking his head in mock-relief as they sailed harmlessly long. Any doubts he may have had about how his recently injured left knee would hold up were long past. In his last three rounds, Djokovic has straight-setted Holger Rune and Musetti, and received a walkover from Alex de Minaur. He’s as well-rested as any 37-year-old could have hoped to be coming into the final.

“Wimbledon just extracts the best of me and motivates me to really always show up and perform the best I can,” said Djokovic, who hadn’t reached a final in 2024 before today.

But much the same can be said of Alcaraz’s performance over the fortnight. Since his early brush with defeat against Frances Tiafoe, he has also improved with each round. On Friday, after serving poorly and dropping a nervous opening set to Daniil Medvedev, Alcaraz took control in the second and never let go. By the end, he looked as calm and confident of victory as he has all tournament—and this was against an elite, perennial Top 5 opponent.

“I’m coming into a final feeling great with really high level of tennis, really high level of confidence, moving well,” Alcaraz said afterward. “I have confident enough to do a really good result on Sunday.”

After watching them win their semifinals, I don’t think you can give either player an edge based on his current form or level of self-belief. The same goes when you look back at two of their recent meetings, in the Wimbledon and Cincinnati finals in 2023. Alcaraz won the first, 6-4 in the fifth; Djokovic won the second, 7-6 in the third. They were the two best matches of that year, and each was one or two points from going the other way. (They also faced off in the semifinals of the year-end championships; Djokovic cruised in that one, 6-3, 6-2.)

“I see a lot of similarities between me and him in terms of ability to adapt and adjust to the surface,” Djokovic said of Alcaraz. “He’s a very all-around player, very complete player.”

“Everybody knows Djokovic,” Alcaraz said. “He has played multiple Grand Slam finals, have won a lot of them. Last year it was a really difficult match. He put me in a really trouble.”

“I know what I have to do. I’m sure he knows what he has to do to beat me.”

if Djokovic does build a lead, or get his teeth into this match, will he have an edge in motivation? He has a long history of leveling the score against his rivals.

The first question for me is whether Alcaraz can avoid a slow start. He lost the first set of last year’s final 6-1, and he lost the first set of his last two matches, to Tommy Paul and Medvedev.

Which leads to my next question: If Alcaraz does start slowly, can Djokovic put the dagger in by taking a two-set, rather than just a one-set lead? He had a chance to do that last year, but made a couple of rare unforced errors to squander a lead in the second-set tiebreaker.

We know generally what we’ll get from Djokovic in a Wimbledon final. He’s 7-2 in them, and he rarely throws in a clunker of a match at any Slam. Alcaraz’s game is more variable. His serve and forehand have been on and off at this event so far, and it would be a surprise if his level didn’t drop at some point on Sunday. Yet he’s a perfect 3-0 so far in major finals; two of those three wins have come in max-pressure, winner-take-all fifth sets.

Alcaraz, as the younger, spryer superstar, could prove too strong athletically for Djokovic at this stage of his career. But if Djokovic does build a lead, or get his teeth into this match, will he have an edge in motivation? He has a long history of leveling the score against his rivals. He turned losing records to Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal into winning ones. He lost to Medvedev in the 2021 US Open final, then beat in the same match two years later. After last year’s Wimbledon loss to Alcaraz, he turned the tables on him in Cincy a month later.

Djokovic wants to win an all-time record 25th major. He wants to tie Federer with his eighth Wimbledon. He wants to do what McEnroe and Nadal did when they turned a legendary defeat from the year before into a legendary victory. Might all of that be enough to make mind triumph over matter once again for him? Winner: Djokovic