Well at the later part of the 2nd set, Alcaraz was pushing Novak off the baseline, to me there was a slight momentum shift, even my commentator Todd Woodbridge said the same thing? no one can say 100% how the match would have panned out? if Alcaraz had not suffered cramps? yes Novak came out in the 1st set and played flawless tennis? he made a statement, though even Novak can have dips in his matches., could Novak keep up that level? he showed in the 1st set?, all match? too many unanswered questions, just pure specualation .Shame that Alcaraz suffered cramps, still it is a learning curve for Alcaraz moving forward in his career.Novak deserved his win in the SF.
momentum is not a stright line…. How many times have we seen Novak lose a set when opponent has ‘momentum’ and them race to a lead in next set?
in 1st set, novak dominated.
In the second set, it was a bit strange.. there were many momentum shifts. Alcaraz struck first, then novak broke back and had a break point to go up and close out set.. carlitos fought it and broke and got the set. Also, if you remember, there was a weird few games where novak was having some elbow issues… he took mph off his first serve, mcenroe mentioned it.. and he had two bad service games. The set was a thriller with momentum shifts.. great points.
carlitos got the set but not in dominant fashion, he was like close to losing it. Then, as i mention, momentum is not a straight line. Often when a player has momentum, it’s followed by a dip.. it’s the law of human energy, difficult to play flawless and maintain that intensity and energy. It’s possible that novak could’ve raced to a lead in 3rd set…. We will never know.
Just speculation. In the end, i think it was 100% djokovic’s physicality, shot making, defense that was the main problem. Carlitos was toying with his previous opponents and i think came in overconfident hoenstly. He seemed surprised by novak’s pace in 1set, in many rallies novak’s fh absorbed carlitos’ pace and ball came back even harder. He was moving carlitos, doing to him what carlitos did to previous opponents. Ontop of pace, novak was running down balls unlike carlito’s previous opponents.. Second set was no cakewalk, carlitos had to run a lot, summon a very high level and face many pressure points…
Novak caused the cramps…
i also can’t recall ever seeing a player bail out for 2 sets after cramps, especially after just 2 sets. These athletes can recover, i think he gave up mentally too, my opinion. He pulled a djokovic when novak gave up against rafa early in his career.
