WIMBLEDON – There were just a few minutes left until Carlos Alcaraz, the hot kid now at the All-England Club the way so many tennis kids before him had been exactly that, was about to take one of the great walks there is to take in his sport. It is the one the defending men’s champion takes the year after he has won here, when he is about to play the first match on Centre Court at the next Wimbledon. And in so many big and important ways, this walk perfectly described the tennis place, what can feel like the only tennis place, where they look back at the past as respectfully as they do, but keep looking to the future as well.
And the future of men’s tennis, for now and perhaps for a long time if he is blessed with good health, is the 21-year-old Alcaraz. “It’s kind of a wonderful and delicate balance here, looking behind us and looking ahead at the same time, isn’t it,” a young volunteer named Chris Wood said at Centre Court while he waited for Alcaraz the way Wimbledon did. So Alcaraz would take the walk that Jimmy Connors did when he was the hot kid here.
Alcaraz would take the walk, as the reigning French Open champ, that Bjorn Borg took five times as the reigning French Open champ. Then John McEnroe came along to finally stop Borg’s streak of five straight Wimbledons. It would be Pete Sampras later, again and again, and then Roger Federer winning one more Wimbledon than Pete’s seven.
The first time Rafael Nadal took the walk was after beating Federer in .
