It was a fantastic Wimbledon in 2023! Tennis fans got to see the men’s final they wanted in Carlos Alcaraz versus Novak Djokovic and the two players proved why that’s the final we wanted. On the women’s side, Marketa Vondrousova became the first unseeded woman to ever win the tournament.
The weather wasn’t great, but the tennis was. We had surprise competitors in both the men’s and women’s quarterfinals which made for interesting tennis. This kept more eyes watching (more on that in just a minute).
We also learned a few things. And let’s be real, were disappointed by a few things. Here are three takeaways from Wimbledon 2023.
Starting at the end: Carlos Alcaraz is about to change tennis
People like new shiny things. A new phone comes on the market? We have to have it. A new Tom Cruise film opens at the theaters? We have to see it. And so it is with 20-year-old Carlos Alcaraz. The difference between Alcaraz and those other things is that 10 years from now Alcaraz is still going to be extremely relevant and working at a high level.
It’s pretty easy to point out that as good as Alcaraz is and how young he is, he has a very good chance, barring injury, of catching Novak Djokovic’s record of 23 Grand Slams. Djokovic is still playing at a high level as well and maybe he has another few major titles in him yet, but it feels like one king was dethroned (Djokovic) and another crowned (Alcaraz) during the Wimbledon final. Plus, who would you think would win right now at the US Open? Carlos Alcaraz or Novak Djokovic? Alcaraz, right?
But besides just winning a lot of Grand Slams and maybe one day replacing Djokovic as arguably the best tennis player ever, Alcaraz is going to bring a lot more eyes to tennis and that’s a fantastic thing. The BBC said their peak viewership during the Alcaraz-Djokovic final was 11.3 million on BBC One, the highest total since Andy Murray played in the 2016 final. The difference is that Murray is a Brit and Alcaraz is not. Alcaraz is going to change how many people are interested in tennis worldwide and the sport needs that.
American men’s tennis still has a long way to go
Having highly successful American men’s tennis players is good for tennis. I don’t write that simply because I am an American and want Americans to win. That’s not the case. But the United States is also a wealthy country where people have a lot of time and money to watch and spend on sport. Having a top-five American man who consistently fights to win majors would be a good thing because more Americans would watch.
Coming into Wimbledon, the United States fielded 13 players on the men’s side with five of those players being seeded. Heck, Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe are currently even ranked in the top 10 (number 9 and 10, respectively) and their games should translate well to tennis as both have excellent serves. While no American man was truly expected to get to the finals, it would have been nice had any other ranked players gotten past the third round, but none did.
One American did make it to the quarterfinals, however. That was Chris Eubanks who few had heard of before Wimbledon. It would be fantastic if Eubanks continued his recent run of relative success, though, and he has an excellent life story and his style of play is extremely likable.
But Eubanks also has a limited game where if his serve is off at all, he’s not going to win. Tiafoe has a fairly well-rounded game but his ceiling isn’t anywhere close to Carlos Alcaraz on an off day. Hopefully, soon, American tennis will get its next Pete Sampras or Andre Agassi.
The ATP and WTA will have two different issues atop the rankings moving forward
There is a catch-22 when it comes to sports. People generally don’t like one team or one person to always win because eventually, the fan of the opponent loses interest if their favorite never wins either. It’s a bit like being a fan of the Washington Generals and expecting them to truly compete with the Harlem Globetrotters. But then fans don’t normally like too much parity either.
On the men’s side, Carlos Alcaraz is clearly the best player currently and no one is even remotely close to him other than Novak Djokovic. But Djokovic is much closer to the end of his career than the beginning while Alcaraz is the complete opposite. Alcaraz could dominate his sport for the next decade and that’s not good for tennis in general. The Big 3 – Roger Feder, Rafael Nadal, and Djokovic – were pushed and made better by the others, and the entire sport was better for it.
On the women’s side, however, there is no true alpha. Iga Swiatek has been number one for more than a year, and while she is an excellent player on some surfaces she definitely has weaknesses and her long-time ranking doesn’t truly seem to compare to greats like Monica Seles or Steffi Graf. It honestly just feels like fans of the WTA are waiting for some player to overtake Swiatek and then we might have chaos atop the rankings for quite some time.
Ideally, some other young player – Jannik Sinner or Holger Rune, maybe – improves their game enough to challenge Alcaraz for the foreseeable future while a few different women – Swiatek, along with Ons Jabeur, or Elina Rybakina possibly – will hopefully prove their dominance over the rest of the field while battling with each other for Grand Slams.