For Car­los Al­caraz, there was one brief blip in the Wim­ble­don men’s fi­nal against No­vak Djokovic on Sun­day, one five-point stretch that took him from the verge of vic­to­ry to close to a col­lapse.

Af­ter dom­i­nat­ing for the ini­tial two sets, then seem­ing­ly with­stand­ing a surge from Djokovic in the third, Al­caraz was a point from the cham­pi­onship while serv­ing at 5-4, 40-love. But he dou­ble-fault­ed. Then missed a back­hand. Then a vol­ley. Then a fore­hand. And an­oth­er fore­hand. Sud­den­ly, it was 5-all. Sud­den­ly, Al­caraz ap­peared rat­tled. Sud­den­ly, Djokovic could hope. Sud­den­ly, there was in­trigue.

It would re­quire an ad­di­tion­al 20 min­utes to close things out, and while Al­caraz is cer­tain­ly a kid in a hur­ry, he stead­ied him­self and nev­er wa­vered again, de­feat­ing Djokovic 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (4) to col­lect a fourth Grand Slam ti­tle at age 21.

“For me,” Al­caraz said af­ter re­ceiv­ing the gold cham­pi­on’s hard­ware from Kate, the Princess of Wales, “this is the most beau­ti­ful tour­na­ment, the most beau­ti­ful court and, ob­vi­ous­ly, the most beau­ti­ful tro­phy.”

It was a re­match of last year’s cham­pi­onship match on the grass of the All Eng­land Club, which Al­caraz won in five sets. This one was much eas­i­er for Al­caraz, at least un­til he stum­bled while hold­ing those three match points at 5-4.

“It was dif­fi­cult for me,” said Al­caraz, who is 4-0 in ma­jor fi­nals, in­clud­ing at the 2022 U.S. Open as a teenag­er. “I tried to stay calm. I tried to stay pos­i­tive.”

He did, in­deed, re­group and picked up a sec­ond ma­jor ti­tle in a row af­ter last month’s tri­umph on the clay at the French Open.

The 37-year-old Djokovic, wear­ing a gray sleeve on his sur­gi­cal­ly re­paired right knee, was de­nied in his bid for an eighth Wim­ble­don ti­tle and record 25th ma­jor over­all. He tore his menis­cus at Roland Gar­ros on June 3 and had an op­er­a­tion in Paris two days lat­er.

“When I re­flect … on what I’ve been through,” Djokovic said, “I have to say that I’m very sat­is­fied.”

Less than six weeks af­ter surgery, Djokovic was hard­ly at his best Sun­day on a cloudy af­ter­noon at Cen­tre Court — and Al­caraz cer­tain­ly had some­thing to do with that.

“Es­pe­cial­ly in the first cou­ple of sets, the lev­el of ten­nis wasn’t re­al­ly up to par on my side,” said Djokovic, whose two chil­dren were in his guest box. “He had it all to­day. I tried to push him. ... But it wasn’t meant to be.”

In the third set, Djokovic got his on­ly break of serve all day to make it 5-5, as spec­ta­tors chant­ed his two-syl­la­ble nick­name — “No-le! No-le!” — while oth­ers replied with cho­rus­es of “Let’s go, Car­los! Let’s go!”

But in the en­su­ing tiebreak­er, Al­caraz earned his fourth match point and stayed cool as can be. Soon he was climb­ing through the stands to hug his coach, Juan Car­los Fer­rero, and oth­ers.

Just un­der 2 1/2 hours ear­li­er, at the out­set, the open­ing game ap­peared to por­tend an en­gross­ing, back-and forth con­test — and a long one, per­haps wor­ry­ing some folks about get­ting to a pub or couch in time to see Eng­land face Spain in the men’s soc­cer Eu­ro­pean Cham­pi­onship fi­nal in Ger­many on Sun­day night. Al­caraz, of course, had a root­ing in­ter­est.

All told, that game con­sist­ed of sev­en deuces and 20 points across a hair shy of 14 min­utes, con­tain­ing bril­liant mo­ments by both. Sprint­ing, slid­ing, stretch­ing de­fense by Djokovic. Re­turn win­ners by Al­caraz. When he slapped a strong re­ply to a 125 mph (202 kph) serve and drew a wide fore­hand from Djokovic, Al­caraz cashed in his fifth break chance.

That, it turned out, was the most com­pet­i­tive por­tion of the pro­ceed­ings un­til the third set.

Not to say there weren’t hints of bril­liance the rest of the way. Just the out­come nev­er re­al­ly seemed in dis­pute.

Djokovic dou­ble-fault­ed to hand over a 5-1 lead in the first set. He put a vol­ley in­to the net to fall be­hind by a break to be­gin the sec­ond, then dou­ble-fault­ed to end that one.

This was not the body-con­tort­ing, get-to-every­thing Djokovic every­one is ac­cus­tomed to see­ing, mind you. There’s his age, first of all, and the mat­ter of his knee, which raised se­ri­ous ques­tions about whether it would be pos­si­ble to even par­tic­i­pate at Wim­ble­don.

By his ac­count, Djokovic felt free of pain and able to move with his usu­al verve by on­ly his third or fourth match of the fort­night. Against Al­caraz, Djokovic oc­ca­sion­al­ly hopped awk­ward­ly when he land­ed af­ter serv­ing or stepped gin­ger­ly — as if bare­foot on a beach’s hot sand — be­tween points.

Miss­ing vol­leys he usu­al­ly makes, Djokovic won just 27 of 53 points when he went to the net. Af­ter net­ting a vol­ley to close one ear­ly 11-stroke ex­change, Djokovic sighed and walked to his side­line seat to grab a pur­ple-and-green tow­el for dab­bing at sweat. His fa­cial ex­pres­sion was say­ing: “Come on, Car­l­i­tos, pick on some­one your own age.”

Al­caraz was out­stand­ing in pret­ty much every way, from the ba­sic to the sorts of shots no one else would even try. Once, he leaped and wrapped his rack­et all the way around his back to get the ball over the net, al­though Djokovic did put an over­head away to get that point. Al­caraz ran wide of the dou­bles al­ley for fore­hand win­ners. Claimed points via drop shots. Smacked serves at up to 136 mph (219 kph). Ac­cu­mu­lat­ed 14 break points, con­vert­ing five, and faced just three.

What can’t Al­caraz do?

Two days be­fore the fi­nal, Djokovic paid Al­caraz quite a com­pli­ment, say­ing: “I see a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween me and him.”

So true. And re­mem­ber: Al­caraz is just get­ting start­ed.

“I want,” Al­caraz said, “to keep go­ing.”

LON­DON (AP)