The original plan of the All England Club was to have the champion’s press conference before the finalist’s, which is quite unusual, since the champion usually has many duties to attend to, especially with all the rightholder televisions. As it turned out, Kevin Anderson was ready outside the interview room at his announced time and Novak was still nowhere to be seen, so the South African ended up talking to the journalists first.
“It was a tough start for me. You know, you always have high hopes – said Anderson – Going into the match, I was hoping to draw on some previous experiences, playing at the US Open in the finals, obviously playing Federer a couple days ago. But I didn’t really find my form the way I wanted to. Of course, my body didn’t feel great. I mean, I don’t think you’re going to expect it to feel great this deep into a tournament when you’ve played so much tennis. But I was definitely quite nervous starting out the match. Didn’t play great tennis in the beginning. I tried my best to keep at it. Definitely felt much better in the third set. I thought I had quite a few opportunities to win that third set, especially a couple of the points where Novak hit a couple balls, I thought they were actually going out, managed to land right on the line. I would have loved to have pushed it to another set, but it obviously wasn’t meant to be”.
The whole tennis world was curious to see how Kevin was going to recover from the six-and-a-half-hour, 99-game battle he won on Friday against Isner: “Honestly, Saturday was pretty tough. There was a lot of thoughts going through my mind of, Am I going to be ready to play another three-out-of-five-set match on Sunday against somebody like Novak. Getting here to the courts, seeing the doctors, seeing the podiatrist for my feet. Having a very light hit, I probably only hit for 10 or 15 minutes. You go through certain exercises that I do. When things aren’t feeling the way they should, you always have a little bit of doubt. I barely slept on Friday night, [but] last night I was able to get in a pretty good night. Waking up today, I actually felt okay, insomuch that, you know, I don’t think the match was entirely just because I wasn’t feeling the freshest. It was a bit more of being able to play the kind of tennis I needed to at this stage. In the third set, I was able to actually pick it up a little bit. Obviously would have loved to have gone to a fourth set. I don’t know how I would have felt as the match progressed. Novak is very tough to match physically. I think all in all, my body actually handled it pretty well”.
Regardless of today’s result, the last two weeks at the Championships will propel Anderson to his highest ranking of n.5 on Monday. “It really means a lot actually. It was about two and a half years ago, just in the team and in the chat, we had a chat on WhatsApp called top-five Kev. That was the goal. I got to top 10 that year. Things were looking good. Then obviously I had a major setback and injuries in 2016. So seeing that I made top five, I’m incredibly proud of that achievement, especially if I look back where I was just 15 months ago, around 80. It’s really something I can be very proud of”.
Two minutes after the end of Anderson’s press conference, Novak Djokovic walked into the press room, greeted by the traditional applause reserved for Grand Slam champions (this is the only exception made to the “no cheers in the box” rule) and wearing the All England Club members’ badge.
He said the break on the very first game of the match was extremely important to him: “The first game I made a break of serve was a perfect possible start. After that I cruised for two sets. In the third set, he started hitting his spots with the serve much better. He started swinging through the ball, making less errors. He was the better player in the third set, without a doubt. I was just trying to hold on and keep my composure in decisive moments. I served well, played some good shots when I was set points down, then played a perfect tiebreak to finish”.
This 13th Grand Slam title, more than two years after the last one and following major turmoil in his professional and personal life (the elbow surgery, the temporary split with his old-time coach Vajda, the problems in his marriage), has a very special meaning for Novak: “It was a long journey, especially considering that elbow injury that took me out from the tour for six months. When I started training again, came back on the tour, played Australia, but I played with the pain. It was inevitable for me to go on a table and have a surgery, even though I was trying everything to avoid it, to be honest. It was the first, and I hope only, surgery I had. It was supposed to happen. I was still feeling a little bit of discomfort and pain playing Indian Wells, Miami. I just kept going even though everyone was against me competing at that stage. I took the responsibilities. I could not imagine myself being away from the tour another few months after being away from the tour six months in the last season. So I had to learn the lessons in a hard way”.
He had to learn to be “patient in the process” until his body was ready to compete again.
“It took me many tournaments. I couldn’t pick the better place, to be honest, in the tennis world to peak and to make a comeback”, Djokovic said, adding that “alongside the first Wimbledon title when I managed to get No. 1 of the world for the first time in 2011 and win my dream tournament, this is probably next to that the biggest achievement I had”.
With this victory, Djokvoic is returning to the Top-10 and is now looking forward to the North American hard court season with renewed hopes: “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I like to play on hard courts. US Open was always successful tournament for me. I haven’t played it last year because of injuries. I’m looking forward to also go out there and play my best and see where it takes me”.
