Rafael Nadal’s uncle has savaged Novak Djokovic and his team for their ‘suicidal’ tactics against Carlos Alcaraz. The Serbian great was completely outgunned in straight sets by the Spanish star in Sunday’s Wimbledon final.
The 21-year-old became the youngest man in the Open era to win the French Open and Wimbledon back-to-back after defeating Djokovic for the second year in a row at the All England Club. Alcaraz has replaced Nadal as his country’s tennis standard bearer.
Nadal’s uncle, Toni Nadal, played been a key role in the 22-time Grand Slam winner’s success when he served as his nephew’s coach. And he has ripped into Djokovic’s tactics against Alcaraz in a hard-hitting column for El Pais.
Toni said he could empathise with the tough decisions the 37-year-old and his team faced going into the match against a “superior opponent”. He wrote: “Do we face it with our usual weapons and our own style or, on the contrary, do we try to neutralise our opponent by looking for other solutions by moving away from our characteristic game?
Personally, I always chose the first. If it is already difficult to play well doing what one is used to doing, it has always seemed much more difficult to me to do well, and even more so in a final, which is not my custom.”
Toni said Djokovic had wrongly gone for the second option and that his declining powers weren’t taken into consideration enough. He added: “Knowing that neither his legs nor the precision of his strokes were what they once were, and that a long and physical match would not help him either, he tried a tactic that ultimately proved suicidal.
He wanted to impose a high tempo, play aggressively, shorten the exchanges from the back of the court and at the slightest opportunity, close out the points at the net. In my opinion, the only option the Serbian had was to try to slow down the game.
Toni said that relying on Alcaraz having an off-day and hoping to beat him “by speed is practically impossible nowadays”. He added that only one other player can truly compete with Alcaraz now.
“Perhaps only Jannik Sinner can play the Spaniard on equal terms,” he said. “And, in fact, this Sunday’s final confirms that the real rivalry in the next tournaments and, probably, in the next few years will be between these two: the Italian and our great Spanish champion.
