It always loomed as a must-watch clash, and the Cincinnati Masters final between Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz certainly didn't disappoint.
Little separated the two throughout the course of the match. After a tight first set it was Alcaraz who rose to the challenge when he needed it most, breaking late to take the set 7-5. He broke early in the second, too, taking a 4-2 lead and seemingly cruising to victory.
But as he has shown again and again and again and again, Djokovic can quite literally never be counted out. He fought back with all the resilience which has seen him win 23 Grand Slam tournaments to claim the second set in a 9-7 tiebreaker to take it to a deciding set, a set that would require both players to call on every ounce of energy in their reserves. That set, too, went down to the wire, requiring a tiebreaker to settle it, and once again it was the Joker who got the chocolates.
Despite being at the opposite ends of their careers, Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz are the top two players in the world. While Djokovic, the most successful player in the history of the sport, is looking to elongate his career and extend his Grand Slam lead over Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal by as much as possible, Alcaraz is just getting going in a career that looks set to yield plenty of major wins of his own.
Interestingly, after only facing each other once previously the two have now met in three consecutive tournaments which they've both met. When it's all said and done their careers will only have overlapped for a short period, but this match was a sign of what is to come during that time.
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