It is not uncommon to have former winners amongst the spectators at a Wimbledon final. This year’s men’s singles summit clash, in which Carlos Alcaraz defeated four-time defending champion Novak Djokovic 1-6, 7-6(6), 6-1, 3-6, 6-4, was no different as Andy Murray witnessed the thriller on Centre Court at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.
Former World No. 1 Murray has won two of his three Majors at The Championships. In 2013, he defeated Djokovic to become the first British champion in men’s singles since Fred Perry (1936). He won the title again three years later. This year, the 36-year-old Murray lost to fifth-seeded Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas in five sets in the second round.
He made a last-minute decision to watch the final between the two best players in the world and later admitted that he learned a lot from the experience. “I wasn’t planning on going to watch the match. I had to do something at Wimbledon that day and then, after I finished, it was about an hour and a half before the start of the match, and I felt like I should stay for this one. I thought it was going to be, well, a good match to watch,” he said in a press conference on Sunday, ahead of the Washington Open.
“I learned a lot from watching, and I, probably something like looking back, wish I had maybe done a little bit more of. It’s not always that easy to do and sit in the stands and watch matches because, well, most of the people in there are tennis fans and it can be distracting.
“But in the final, like in the times where I got to just sit and watch the match and wasn’t so chatty and everything, I felt like I learned a lot from watching those two.”
Interestingly, before Alcaraz, Murray was the last man who beat Djokovic in a match on Centre Court - in the 2013 final. Since then, the Serbian, a 23-time Major winner, had gone unbeaten in 45 matches on that particular court.
Murray also provided his thoughts on the things he observed during the four hours 42 minutes long epic. He said, “The end of the match, last couple of sets, some of the tennis was brilliant. It was really hard conditions that day. It was very blustery, and so the start maybe wasn’t as clean, but that was more because of the conditions. Then, obviously as the match went on, they both played better and better. You could also sort of see Alcaraz learning as the match was going on. It could have gone either way. It was so tight.”
He added, “I ended up, like taking videos and stuff of the guys and just focusing a little bit more on one side of the net. Looking at their return positions and movement between shots. Also, the times when particularly Alcaraz was looking to play aggressive and offensive tennis and how he was going about doing that.”
READ - Alcaraz lays out his grass credentials with Wimbledon victory
“The thing that’s interesting as well is when I was sitting there, I was also looking like a little bit at the teams and looking at seeing the players and their reactions between the points. Although sometimes on the TV it can appear like they’re calm, you can actually see there was stress and frustration and all those things. When you’re just watching on the TV, they often cut, not all of the time, but a lot of the time, it’s people in the crowd or the guy that’s just won the point and you don’t see those immediate reactions as well. Seeing the frustration was there, but the how they were responding to that as well was interesting.”
Murray, who has resurrected his career after hip resurfacing surgery, is seeded 15th at the ATP 500 event in Washington D.C. and received a bye in the first round. He begins his preparations for the US Open, the Major he won in 2012, against local player Brandon Nakashima.
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