Andy Roddick found Novak Djokovic a bit rushed in the 2024 Wimbledon Championships final against Carlos Alcaraz, and he explained why.
The Serbian didn’t have his best day at the office on that Sunday losing to Alcaraz only in three sets of play. The end result might not have surprised many, but the way the match unfolded certainly surprised quite a few people, as Djokovic never really looked in control of what was happening on Wimbledon’s Centre Court.
From the start, he was on the back foot, and Alcaraz kept applying pressure successfully. That forced the 37-year-old to quickly abandon the role he wanted to play and try to press his opponent, which is unlike him.
Roddick even described it as rushing in the latest episode of his podcast, ‘Served with Andy Roddick’, where he looked back on the final match.
“What I was a little surprised about with Novak and you don’t know if he just… listen he’s smarter than I’ll ever be in this game so you’re not questioning, you’re just wondering what the factors are with the decision to play a certain way.”
The Serbian usually isn’t the one to aggressively push the opponent around the court. Yes, he can be more aggressive than usual, but he generally has a method behind everything he does.
For a long time, he’s been known to extend rallies to give himself a better chance at winning them, but that wasn’t the case against Alcaraz, quite the opposite.
“Novak for his entire career has been the master of kind of extending points, playing within himself, forcing you to attack from tough positions, and today I felt like whether it was the serve and volley, whether it was going line very early, not sticking Carlos into that backend to backend rally, it seemed like Novak was in a hurry to get out of that.”
Roddick was unsure why it happened, but he assumed that Djokovic knew why he was doing it. He certainly wasn’t doing it for no reason because that’s not what he does.
If he’s doing something, it means he’s thought about it and has a goal. Unfortunately for him, the approach didn’t work this time around.
“I don’t fully understand, maybe his read on the first couple of points getting bullied, obviously the knee issue, he must know something that we don’t. I was surprised how quickly he went to that all-out aggressive play.”
