Day nine: Alcaraz had 99 minutes and Norrie was done

Centre Court rose to acknowledge Cameron Norrie, who had – at the very least – tried. No-one could take that away from him. Carlos Alcaraz might be leaving with his hopes, dreams and a third consecutive semi-final, but Norrie proved himself a trier in the great British tradition.

The basis of Alcaraz’s charm is his perceived humanity, his ability to both dig himself into trouble and back out of it. He has supposedly made a habit of discarding sets, of losing concentration, a hard-wired predilection to entertain. And yet, there was little human about this. Across just 99 minutes, there was little humane about it either.

Born in South Africa, raised in New Zealand and based in Monaco, Norrie has never quite been accepted as a bona fide member of the English tennis establishment, but that didn’t stop the odd plummy proclamation of “Cahm-ahn, Cahm-ah-rahn” among a crowd which never quite picked a favourite.

At 30-0 down in the final game, the tailored masses even pityingly launched a chorus of “Let’s go, Cameron, let’s go”. Maybe what it really takes to be loved here as a Brit is resilient yet resounding defeat, the Henman complex we might never quite shake.

There was a sense Norrie turned up to a gunfight with two hands and rapidly-diminishing hope. Pre-match talk was that these are both five-set specialists, peddlers of intensity and brutality. Norrie’s flat backhand could cause Alcaraz issues, you know. Even if it was in 2023, the Brit had won their last meeting. He is one of only four British men to have reached multiple Wimbledon quarter-finals, a semi-finalist three years ago.

But John McEnroe claimed there was “not a single” shot Norrie had which bettered Alcaraz’s. If there is one, he did not play it here – just 13 winners attest to that. With him go this sceptred isle’s fevered hopes in the singles for another year, once more an annual inevitability.

By the latter stages of the third set, Norrie had the dazed air of a drunkard who has forgotten where he lives. Occasionally he took a speculative leap in the right direction, but that was more luck than planning.

His habit for gamesmanship provoked the ire of both Frances Tiafoe and Nicolas Jarry, but he realised early on there was little place for that here. Norrie won just 11% of first serve return points. Alcaraz, statistically the best first serve returner on grass ever, managed 39%. He made 13 aces to Norrie’s three and converted 45% of his 11 break points. He hit both 135mph serves and dropshots so deft they sucked the air from Centre Court.

And so on goes the reigning champion, 23 wins in a row and 19 here spanning three years. The future will not come any quicker however hard he tries, but that doesn’t stop him trying to hurry it along. Between Jannik Sinner’s suspect elbow and Novak Djokovic’s advancing age, he has both the instinct and intelligence to know this is a remarkable opportunity to become the fifth man in the Open era to win three consecutive men’s singles titles. Taylor Fritz, his semi-final opponent and the fifth seed, is an elite talent and yet eons from Alcaraz’s best. On the basis of this performance, it is hard to imagine anyone isn’t.

For all the talk of the Spaniard’s penchant for mid-match boredom, it must be boring to be this much better than the vast majority of your opponents. “He’s an amazing player and an amazing guy,” Alcaraz said of Norrie post-match. “Nobody works harder than him.” Of course, hard work will only get you so far. Trying is the preserve of losers. Sometimes what you really need is to be Carlos Alcaraz.

Photograph by Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images