WIMBLEDON Djokovic beats Anderson for title
WIMBLEDON, England – After days of grueling, thrilling, relentless matches, with hold-your-breath serves and slap-your-forehead rallies, this championship took an anticlimactic turn.
Wimbledon went out with a whimper.
Novak Djokovic needed just three sets to dispatch Kevin Anderson 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (3) to claim his fourth singles title at this storied tournament.
Djokovic, who improved to 4-1 in Wimbledon finals, said he has been fixated on these achievements since he was a young boy.
“I made a lot of improvised Wimbledon trophies from different materials,” said Djokovic, 31, who collects about $3 million in prize money. “I really always dreamed of winning Wimbledon.
“When that happened back in 2011, when I became No. 1 of the world, in just a couple days all my dreams came true. It’s really hard to compare this year’s victory and trophy with any of the other three because they’re all special. But if I can pick one, that would be probably the first one and this year’s winning because my son was at the trophy ceremony, which made it extra special.”
But the tennis itself Sunday was devoid of the high drama that led up to the finals.
A quick review: Anderson upset Federer in the quarterfinals, then outlasted John Isner in a back-and-forth marathon that lasted a Centre Courtrecord 6 hours and 36 minutes and had a 50-game fifth set.
Djokovic and Nadal had a semifinal odyssey of their own with a five-set battle that lasted 5:15 and stretched over two days.
So to see Sunday’s match breeze past in 2:19, with Anderson offering little resistance in the first two sets, was a letdown.
“I sort of had high hopes and expectations that going out there I was going to be a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more free,” said Anderson, 32, who was bidding to become the first South African man to win a Wimbledon title. “That wasn’t meant to be. The way the ball was coming off my racket, sort of the quality of my footwork, my ball striking wasn’t where it needed to be to compete with somebody like Novak.” Kylian Mbappe of France, center, scores his team’s fourth goal during the FIFA World Cup final match in Moscow on Sunday.
MOSCOW – Golden confetti mixed with a hard rain Sunday night, drenching the French national soccer team in unfettered joy and a refreshing shower after a 4-2 victory over Croatia in the World Cup final.
The storm also hid tears streaming from the eyes of the fallen Croatians, whose heroic run through soccer’s ultimate testing ground offered hope to every small country with big dreams.
But the sudden downpour – which caught Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French and Croatian counterparts by surprise on the medal stand – failed to wash away the memories of an extraordinary tournament, one that will enter the archives as perhaps the best in the World Cup’s 88-year history.
Fittingly, the final delivered many of the same twists and turns, riveting moments, individual superlatives and wonderful soccer that had blessed the competition over four upsetfilled weeks.
And ultimately it provided a worthy champion. Twenty summers since winning their first title on home soil, a team deploy-