If you watched enough of Wimbledon over the past two weeks, you are familiar with the promotional spot ESPN ran continually.
It prominently features the Williams sisters, Roger Federer and Andy Murray. Coco Gauff comes in at the end, and Novak Djokovic gets a token mention. But really, the selling point of the ad — of the sport — is the last generation far more than it is this one.
Carlos Alcaraz might have changed that on Sunday.
The 20-year-old Spaniard bested Djokovic in an epic Wimbledon final that twisted and turned, maturing before the world’s eyes to take a 6-1, 7-6 (6), 6-1, 3-6, 6-4 victory for his second major title — and the first in which he had to overcome Djokovic.
In so doing, Alcaraz became the first player not named Novak, Roger, Rafa or Andy to win Wimbledon in more than two decades, since Lleyton Hewitt in 2002.
Though Murray has yet to retire and Nadal is building up to an exit after next summer’s Olympics, Djokovic is for all intents and purposes the last of the four horsemen standing.
He continues to be the de facto favorite at every major, and knifed through this Wimbledon by proving almost unbeatable on serve and in tiebreaks — dropping just two sets prior to the final.
Alcaraz on Sunday got thrashed in the first set and looked mentally out of it. By the end of the match, he had broken Djokovic’s sterling tiebreak record and, repeatedly, his serve — taking an 85-minute second set with an 8-6 tiebreak, then control of the match by breaking Djokovic’s serve in a 27-minute, 13-deuce game to go up 4-1 in the third.
It was Djokovic, by the end, who was smashing his racket as Alcaraz went up a break in the fifth. It was Djokovic who had no answer for the opponent’s serve. And it was Djokovic left to marvel at the array of shotmaking from Alcaraz, who played the last four sets cold as ice.
Djokovic, by the way, may not be the favorite next month in New York.
Alcaraz will come into Flushing as the defending champion at a tournament Djokovic — unable to enter the United States because of his unvaccinated status — did not play last year. Since he last won the U.S. Open in 2018, Djokovic has won the Australian Open four times, the French Open twice and Wimbledon three times.
The last time he played there, in 2021, he lost a straight-sets final to Daniil Medvedev as a chance at a calendar-year Grand Slam slipped from his grasp.
The year before that, Djokovic suffered one of the most embarrassing incidents of his career, defaulting from a fourth-round match in the first set after hitting a line official in the throat with a ball. And in 2019, he retired in the fourth round due to an injury.
In other words, Djokovic has failed to reach more finals at the U.S. Open in the past five years than at every other major in which he has played combined.
He also just lost to Alcaraz on a surface on which he has historically dominated and on which the Spaniard barely had played prior to the past fortnight.
If you wanted a test of Alcaraz’s fortitude, something to show you that after two decades of false starts named Juan Martin del Potro, David Ferrer, Marin Cilic, Stan Wawrinka, Milos Raonic and Dominic Thiem, well, here it was.
Over a four-hour, 42-minute marathon, Alcaraz met the moment and rose above it. This was not Djokovic wilting in the slightest. It was punch-for-punch, counter-for-counter — a bruising display of nerve after Alcaraz fell apart against the same opponent at Roland Garros.
One final tells us more about what could happen than what will. Recall del Potro’s 2009 win over Federer in New York that looked to portend the Argentinian breaking into the elite — then recall how del Potro suffered a wrist injury the next year and was never the same.
Alcaraz, though, just won a match that stands as one of the great finals in Wimbledon history. He is 20 years old, still finding his game and getting better.
If this is what it looks like when Alcaraz came into this grass-court season having played just six ATP matches on the surface, what will it look like in a few years? What will it look like next month in New York?
Whatever the answer, you can bet Alcaraz will be part of the advertising.
Today’s back page
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Deadline day for the Giants & Saquon
Here is what we know that Dave Gettleman bizarrely forgot in 2018: Running back is not a position of value in the NFL.
Players do not last long, they suffer immense wear, they are generally not as hard to replace as stars at other positions.
This is nothing against Saquon Barkley, an excellent running back who has made the Giants better and had a magnificent 2022.
But the Giants should be playing hardball with a multi-year contract, which must be signed by 4 p.m. ET Monday if Barkley is to avoid the franchise tag.
If Barkley signs the franchise tender at $10.1 million for next season, that should be fine with the organization’s brass.
If he refuses to do so and eventually leaves, that would be less than ideal, but at 26 and having suffered five years’ worth of NFL bruising, history tells us that Barkley could just as easily fall off a cliff as maintain his current level.
The worst thing the Giants could do is see an overachieving 2022 as reason to avoid long-term thinking. It doesn’t seem that has come into play with Barkley so far — The Post’s Ryan Dunleavy reported the best offer the team has made is $19.5 million guaranteed. Something in that range over two or three seasons seems reasonable.
But if push comes to shove here, the Giants should sit on their hands and wait. It is cold and calculating, and it’s the correct answer to the question, “What would Bill Belichick do?” — as good an operating principle as exists in football.
The last straw for Josh Donaldson?
It was already getting hard to envision Josh Donaldson in a Yankees uniform next season, and it is harder after Donaldson was placed on the injured list Sunday morning due to a calf strain and the Yankees called up Oswald Peraza to fill his roster spot.
Given the money at stake here, it’s also hard to think the Yankees won’t try everything at their disposal to get Donaldson to produce. In that sense, there are worse things than an IL stint — though this does not appear to be the sort of “injury” some expected Donaldson to come down with sooner or later.
In fact, it’s worth wondering whether his leg issues — Donaldson had a hamstring strain earlier this season and tweaked his calf last season before limping off on Saturday — might have something to do with his hitting struggles.
In any case, though, the way the fan base has turned on Donaldson combined with his terrible hitting makes this a golden opportunity for Peraza, who came on as a pinch-runner and later contributed an 11th-inning RBI in the Yankees’ eventual 8-7 loss to the Rockies.
If he looks more like the Peraza who made his major league debut last season (.306/.404/.429 in 18 games) than the one who flopped in a big-league stint early this season (.188/.316/.219 in 12 games), it will compound a lot of existing problems for Donaldson.
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