It took Novak Djokovic five minutes
to break Kevin Anderson serve but he could not break his admirable resistance
over two hours and 19 minutes in a Wimbledon final memorable only for the South
African dogged but doomed fight back.
Anderson, troubled early in the
match by a sore right elbow, was forced to endure one of the most grueling
afternoons of his career but Djokovic suffered too, swearing at the crowd as
his frustrations consumed him before he secured his 13th grand slam title, his
fourth here, winning 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (3).
Shattered after surviving six hours
and 35 minutes against John Isner in the first semi-final on Friday, Anderson –
the 2017 US Open runner-up – refused to surrender in his second major final and
dug deep to make a fight of it in the third set, although it was still a poor
spectacle. The
longest rally of the match lasted 15 shots, as Anderson strove to hold serve at
0-2 in the second set. There were the usual sympathetic cheers when he managed
it, but pointlessness and inevitability hung heavily in the suffocating air.
Of
the 950 points he had served for in the championships, Anderson, a serving
behemoth and decent athlete, chose to remain on the baseline for 920 of them.
That is either unshakable faith in his ability to hit opponents off the court,
tactical ineptitude, exhaustion, or a combination of all three. Not once in the
first hour of this match did he come in behind his serve. Neither did Djokovic
– but he have no need to; he won through with patience rather than inspiration.
