This year, the men's draw began approaching the stratosphere in the quarterfinal round when Novak Djokovic get as lucky as you can possibly get in sports when his opponent, Lorenzo Musetti from Italy, was forced to retire with an injury early in the third set. At the time his injury hit - it appeared to be late in the second set - Musetti was dominating the match. It wasn't just a matter of Djokovic losing a couple of tough sets - he was absolutely being blown off the court, 4-6 and 3-6. To his credit, he acknowledged how lucky he was to be advancing, sheepishly saying in his post-match interview that Musetti "should have been a winner today, no doubt."
As it turned out, that was just an appetizer for the semifinals that followed. The first semi, Alcaraz v. Zverev, began around 8 p.m. California time, so it seemed like a match where I might be able to make it all the way through. Of course, I had no way of knowing that it would turn out to be the longest men's semifinal in tournament history, clocking in at 5 hours, 27 minutes. As he has been prone to in the early stages of his career, Alcaraz nearly fell to cramps in the third set (after the first two sets went to tiebreakers), and for a brief moment it looked as if he was heading to the net to shake Zverev's hand and call it a day. But he toughed it out, adopting something akin to a tennis version of the rope-a-dope for the next set in order to save himself for the fifth. To my discredit, I gave up on the match when Zverev went up a break in the fifth, thinking there was no way that Alcaraz could come back from that. I was wrong.
There was never any question about trying to watch the Djokovic-Sinner semifinal, which I didn't feel too bad about because I assumed there would be no way, given the way he'd looked two days earlier, that Djokovic could possibly prevail against Sinner. Wrong again. My first hint out the outcome came at 6:26 a.m., when I glanced at my phone and saw a text from my friend Jeff, who was at the airport for the dreaded zero-dark thirty flight to Orange County: "Djoker is up a break in set number 5 against Sinner. Amazing!" And it truly was. Never count a champion out, I suppose.
After those two matches - well over ten hours of tennis - the final couldn't help but be a little anti-climactic and it was, with Alcaraz prevailing in four sets. Kudos to Djokovic for making another major tournament final at age 38. The odds are probably against him winning another one, but it would be foolish to rule it out completely.
At this point, it's hard to imagine what the ceiling might be for Alcaraz. At 22, he has won as many major tournament championships (seven) as John McEnroe did over the course of his entire career. He still has issues with cramping, but he's already got the career slam so there's no question about his ability to play on any type of surface. Whatever happens, it will be fun to watch.
