I wasn’t able to bring my best after arduous route to final, says Anderson
KEVIN Anderson admitted he found the going tough from the start yesterday.
Novak Djokovic earned his first Grand Slam title in more than two years by beating Anderson to win his fourth Wimbledon championship.
Djokovic, seeded 12th, won 6-2 6-2 7-6 (7-3) to claim a 13th Slam — his first major since the 2016 French Open.
Anderson rarely ventured forward and offered little variation — until the third set at least — but Djokovic nullified the increased threat to win in two hours and 18 minutes.
“Of course, my body didn’t feel great,” said Anderson.
“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. I didn’t play great tennis in the beginning. I tried my best to keep at it. I 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 of balls which I thought were going out but which landed right on the line.”
He added: “What separates 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.”
Asked how he had tried to recover between his six-andhalf-hour semi-final victory over John Isner on Friday and yesterday’s final, Anderson said: “Saturday was tough.
“There were a lot of thoughts going through my mind like: ‘Am I going to be ready to play another three-out-of-five-sets match on Sunday against someto
like Novak?’ I got here to the courts, saw the doctors, saw the podiatrist for my feet.
“I had a very light hit. I probably only hit for 10 or 15 minutes. You go through certain exercises. 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 felt OK. I don’t think the match was entirely lost just because I wasn’t feeling the freshest. It was a bit about being able to play the kind of tennis I needed to at this stage.”
He added: “I had high hopes and expectations that going out there I was going to be a little bit more comfortable, a bit more free. That wasn’t meant to be. The way the ball was coming off my racket, the quality of my footwork and my ball-striking wasn’t where it needed to be to compete with somebody like Novak.”