LONDON, July 16. /TASS/. Spanish tennis star Carlos Alcaraz has defeated Novak Djokovic of Serbia in the final match of the 2023 Wimbledon tournament to gab his first Wimbledon trophy.
Alcaraz, 20, (World No. 1 and No. 1 seed at the tournament) beat Djokovic (World No. 2, seeded second) in five sets, 1-6, 7-6 (8-6), 6-1, 3-6, 6-4. So, Alcaraz preserves his top position in ATP’s World Rankings.
Djokovic, 36, is the holder of 23 Grand Slam titles, including eight Wimbledon wins. In all, he has won 94 ATP tournaments and was ATP No. 1 for a record-breaking period of 389 weeks.
This year’s Wimbledon win is the second Grand Slam trophy for Alcaraz, 20. He is the holder of 12 ATP title, with six of them won this season.
This season’s third Grand Slam tennis tournament, Wimbledon, kicked off on July 3 and unlike last year’s event, Russian players were allowed to compete, but under certain conditions.
The Wimbledon tournament, the most prestigious out of the four Grand Slam tournaments, has been held annually in London since 1877. This year’s Wimbledon runs between July 3 and 16 and has $56.3 million in prize money up for grabs.
In 2022, Wimbledon organizers, the AELTC and the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), announced a decision to bar Russian and Belarusian players from participating in the 2022 edition of the tournament, citing Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine as the reason for the ban.
This year, Wimbledon organizers - the AELTC and the LTA - announced a decision to allow Russian and Belarusian players to participate in the tournament as neutrals and under several conditions.
Specifically, athletes from the two countries should not be "actively supporting" Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, must compete under a neutral status and must not be financed by the governments of Russia or Belarus, or by state-run companies from either country.
Following the ban of Russian and Belarusian players from Wimbledon last year, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) announced decisions to strip Wimbledon of ranking points due to its move to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing at the 2022 Grand Slam tournament in London, as it violated the fundamental principles stipulating that players of any nationality can enter tournaments based on their merits and without any type of discrimination. President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach also criticized at that time Wimbledon organizers’ decision to bar players from Russia and Belarus.