By Ros Satar, at Wimbledon
- Novak Djokovic [12] def. Kevin Anderson [8] 6-2 6-2 7-6(3)
- Admits that he struggled on the day after marathon semi-final
WIMBLEDON, UK – Kevin Anderson came up short in his second Slam final and shared how two long deciders took their physical toll.
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Novak Djokovic [12] def. Kevin Anderson [8] 6-2 6-2 7-6(3)
As some feared, when Kevin Anderson took to the court after his two long fifth set encounters in the quarter-final and semi-final. He had dug deep already to come from two sets and a match-point down to Roger Federer in the quarter-finals and played 50 games to finally beat John Isner 26-24 in the final set.
By the time Anderson started to come back into the match, in the third set, it was a little too late, and his more commanding tie-break record coming into the final let him down as Novak Djokovic closed out a fourth Wimbledon win.
He admitted his physical condition after the two matches had left him struggling.
He said: “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. Actually, 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.”
‘Hopefully there will at least be a dialogue’
With having okayed two long fifth sets, Anderson has been vocal in calling for a change to be made, suggesting that there needs to at least be a dialogue.
Anderson continued: “Obviously just with the setup of the tour, the slams are separate from the tour, so we don’t really have the same voice,
I feel, on certain issues. US Open is doing a shot clock. We weren’t really consulted on that. We were sort of told what’s going on with that. I’m hearing a lot of rumours about 16 seeds next year. That’s also not something we’ve chatted about sort of on the council.
“I just hope the slams can also at least look at it and have an open conversation about it. I think it’s at least a conversation worth having both just protecting players’ health when you have these very long matches. But, you know, I honestly don’t know where it exactly will go from that. I guess my hope is just to have a conversation about it.”
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