Novak Djokovic wins his fourth Wimbledon title, first Grand Slam in two years

WIMBLEDON, England — Novak Djokovic had just won his fourth Wimbledon title in a tidy fashion, 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (3), over an understandably diminished Kevin Anderson. Djokovic received his trophy, thanked the crowd and headed inside the All England Lawn and Tennis Club to meet Prince William and Kate Middleton, and greet tennis luminaries such as Martina Navratilova, Rod Laver, Stan Smith and Chris Evert.

Finally, he briskly walked the corridor to where his wife, Jelena, and 3-year-old son, Stefan, were waiting. He hugged Stefan and picked him up. Another duty beckoned the champion almost immediately.

“Can we do it in five minutes?” Djokovic said. “I need this hug.”

It was a very human moment for a 13-time major singles title winner who has been through so much in the last year. There was elbow surgery in February after a six-month hiatus to try to heal it without the knife, and the process and rehabilitation left the 31-year-old full of doubt.

“It’s easy to talk now and look back at it and be kind of grateful, but I really am grateful to go through this kind of, so to say, mixed emotions, turbulences, as well mentally, moments of doubt and disappointment and frustration, anger,” Djokovic said. “It’s a learning curve, it really is. [It] helped me, not just as a tennis player but just as a human being to get to know myself on deeper levels.”

He started here as the No. 12 seed but played a series of matches at Wimbledon that belied a higher level. When he reached the final Sunday, less than 24 hours after his five-set semifinal win over Rafael Nadal, he looked comparatively fresh and easily took the first two sets.

You can forgive the eighth-seeded Anderson for being — as the British might say — knackered. Although the 32-year-old South African had a day off Saturday, he had played a 6-hour, 36-minute semifinal match against No. 9 John Isner on Friday in the second-longest match in Grand Slam history. He spent Saturday seeing trainers and a foot doctor and wondering if he was going to be able to play.

“I didn’t really find my form the way I wanted to,” Anderson said. “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.”

Anderson was broken in his first service game and four times in the first two sets. He began to play better tennis in the third, held serve, and conjured five set points on Djokovic’s serve before the set went to a tiebreak. There, however, his efficiency ran out.

“I just know from my side I was playing much, much better in the third set,” Anderson said. “I think one of the biggest challenges tennis players face, what sort of separated the top guys who have done so well and guys further down, is maybe not necessarily just their raw abilities, but it’s their ability to play their best tennis in these sort of matches.

“I wasn’t able to do that in the beginning. He was. I was able to do it more in the third set. That’s the kind of tennis I would need to have to play and the comfortability I’d need from the beginning.”

The story is in the numbers. Anderson had 32 unforced errors to 13 for Djokovic and didn’t get a single one of his four break points. Djokovic converted all four of his.

Anderson has reached two major finals and has committed to defend his title at the New York Open next year. Meanwhile, Djokovic has found the best part of his game again.

“I couldn’t pick the better place, to be honest, in the tennis world, to peak and to make a comeback,” Djokovic said. “Wimbledon has been always a very special tournament to me, and to many players, obviously. I dreamed of winning it when I was a 7-year-old boy. I made a lot of improvised Wimbledon trophies from different materials. I really always dreamed of winning Wimbledon.”