Carlos Alcaraz's physio sends Novak Djokovic message after 'expected' Wimbledon win
PA
Carlos Alcaraz's physio has praised Novak Djokovic after the Serb complimented the new Wimbledon champion.
The two men played out a classic final on Sunday, with Alcaraz eventually winning 1-6 7-6 (8-6) 6-1 3-6 6-4 to secure a second Grand Slam of his career - having scooped the US Open title last year.
After the match, Djokovic complimented Alcaraz by saying he was a player unlike any he'd faced before.
And the 20-year-old's physio, Juanjo Moreno, has now responded to Djokovic in an interview with the ATP Tour.
Carlos Alcaraz's physio has sent a message to Novak Djokovic
PA
"It is special to hear such amazing words from a sportsman like Novak Djokovic, a legend of tennis," he said.
"His opinion is very respectable and I’m proud that he would say something like that about my athlete."
However, he sounded surprisingly apprehensive when talking about Alcaraz potentially dominating the sport for many years to come.
"But in terms of longevity, it’s very complicated," he continued.
"Tennis is a very physically demanding discipline; it’s unusual for a tennis player not to go through injuries.
"There’s little time to adapt, the calendar is demanding and you never know in terms of planning how long a match will last.
"I can do calculations but it’s impossible to know until the match is over.
"At a Grand Slam you can play everything in less than three hours, but then you can actually end up playing for over five hours.
"In that regard it’s a very demanding sport, along with other realities like the type of balls.
"Some are very hard, you have to take into account the material they’re made from. There are many risk factors, as we physios and fitness coaches would say.
"There are too many variables for picking up an injury to be able to calculate a sportsman’s longevity."
Though Alcaraz is world No 1, his victory over Djokovic still came as a surprise to some close to the sport.
After all, the was going up against a man with 23 Grand Slam titles to his name - while he'd also won the past four Wimbledon finals.
But Moreno insisted he always had confidence in Alcaraz, adding: "To us it’s surprising from a certain point of view, but from another the result achieved by Carlos was also to be expected.
"We prepare to win every competition we enter, therefore we try to choose carefully which ones we go to.
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"If we managed to win Queen’s and Wimbledon with such a short period of adaptation to the surface, of course it’s surprising.
"Surprising from the point of view of a huge historic achievement, but not because we weren’t expecting it.
"Really, we were expecting to win it and that’s what we work for every day."
And Alcaraz's physio was also delighted at how the youngster lasted the course, having suffered with cramps at the French Open in June.
"At Roland Garros those cramps came around two hours into the match," he said.
Carlos Alcaraz is the talk of the tennis world after Novak Djokovic Wimbledon triumph
PA"At Wimbledon he played for almost five hours and the cramps didn’t appear. That shows that Carlos is an athlete who learns very quickly from his experiences.
"Roland Garros is a very important tournament for him and it demands a little more of him than other tournaments, knowing that you’re playing the best of five sets.
"He overcame that challenge at Wimbledon and, as he said, the origin of that situation was more his nervous system than physiological and the data proves it.
"He won Wimbledon, he held on to No 1 and he did it based on the experience he had at Roland Garros with Djokovic."