Djokovic clinches thrilling opening set against Alcaraz in Paris Olympic final

p a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/novak-djokovic/d643/overview'Novak Djokovic/a is one set away from his first Olympic gold medal after overcoming a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/carlos-alcaraz/a0e2/overview'Carlos Alcaraz/a 7-6(3) in a pulsating first set on Sunday afternoon in Paris. /p

p Both Djokovic and his great rival Alcaraz showcased remarkable resilience under pressure as a set featuring 13 break points (Djokovic 5, Alcaraz 8) somehow reached a tie-break without a break of serve. The highlights included Alcaraz rallying from 0/40 to hold in the fourth game, while Djokovic pulled through a see-saw ninth game, packed with scintillating tennis from both players, having faced five break points. /p

p Djokovic’s final break point of the set doubled as a set point at 6-5, 30/40. Although he could not convert, the Serbian retained his composure to reel off four straight points from 3/3 in the tie-break and move ahead after a brutal 94 minutes on Court Philippe-Chatrier. /p

blockquote class="twitter-tweet"p lang="en" dir="ltr"NOVAK IS ONE SET AWAY FROM OLYMPIC GOLD ????a href="https://twitter.com/DjokerNole?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@DjokerNole/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Olympics?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#Olympics/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Paris2024?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#Paris2024/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/tennis?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#tennis/a a href="https://t.co/GNciD17FHY"pic.twitter.com/GNciD17FHY/a/pmdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1820093534466429293?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"August 4, 2024/a/blockquote script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script

p Djokovic is competing in his first Olympic gold-medal match just eight and a half weeks after undergoing meniscus surgery on his right leg. He fell to Alcaraz in the final at a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/wimbledon/540/overview'Wimbledon/a in his only other tournament since the operation, but is now on the brink of becoming just the fifth player — after Steffi Graf, a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/andre-agassi/a092/overview'Andre Agassi/a, a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/rafael-nadal/n409/overview'Rafael Nadal/a and Serena Williams — to complete the ‘Golden Slam’ of winning all four major titles and an Olympic gold medal in singles. /p

p Alcaraz is aiming to add an Olympic title to his already-stellar summer, during which he won his third and fourth Grand Slam titles at a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/roland-garros/520/overview'Roland Garros/a and a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/wimbledon/540/overview'Wimbledon/a, respectively. The 21-year-old Spaniard is the youngest man to contest a singles gold-medal match since the Olympic Tennis Event returned in 1988, while Djokovic is the oldest. /p

p Sunday’s encounter is the second on Court Philippe-Chatrier between the No. 2 in the PIF ATP Rankings Djokovic and No. 3 Alcaraz after Djokovic triumphed in the 2022 a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/roland-garros/520/overview'Roland Garros/a semi-finals. The pair’s overall Lexus ATP Head2Head series stands at 3-3. /p

p [NEWSLETTER FORM] /p