Novak Djokovic was full of praise for young rival Carlos Alcaraz, who won their Wimbledon final rematch in straight sets on Sunday.

A year earlier, in the 2023 final, Djokovic lost the match but pushed Alcaraz to the brink, holding a set point for a two-sets-to-love lead, and a break point for 2-0 in the fifth set, before succumbing in four hours and 42 minutes.

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This time around, Alcaraz powered to a 6-2 6-2 7-6(4) victory in under two-and-a-half hours.

“I guess it was inevitable for him to win today because he was just coming out on the court with a better quality tennis. It’s as simple as it is,” Djokovic reflected.

“I was inferior on the court. That’s it. He was a better player. He played every single shot better than I did.

“I don’t think I could have done something much more. Try to pump myself up maybe, yes. Get the crowd involved. That’s what was happening in the third. That got me going a little bit.

“(Last year) I lost in an epic five-set match that we went toe-to-toe. This year it was nothing like that. It was all about him.

“He was the dominant force on the court and deserved to win.”

Djokovic, who finished with 26 winners to Alacraz’s 42, could nevertheless be proud of the fact he’d even reached this stage of the tournament at all.

A meniscus tear forced him to pull out of Roland Garros ahead of his quarterfinal match, and he immediately underwent surgery. Within a month, he was healthy enough to begin his campaign at the All England Club, and incredibly he went all the way to his 10th Wimbledon final at 37 years of age.

“If someone told me I would play Wimbledon finals three, four weeks ago, I would take it for sure,” he said.

But he confronted a final opponent who represented a sharp spike in level and quality compared with who he’d beaten to arrive at that point.

Alcaraz was surging after winning the Roland Garros title last month, and had built a 13-match winning streak at the Grand Slams.

In a dramatic opening game, he broke Djokovic on his fifth break point to gain the immediate ascendancy, and never looked back.

“That set the tone,” Djokovic acknowledged.

“Of course, I do feel disappointed. It’s a bitter taste to lose the finals the way I did today… I can always be self-critical, which I am. I can always find the flaws, which I can already see. Things that I maybe should have executed better.

“I don’t think that would change too much the course of the match, to be honest. From the very beginning, you could see he was at least half a step better than I am in every way.”

Djokovic, however, expects to rebound.

He is still targeting Olympic success at Paris 2024 as well as the US Open, where he is the defending champion and will chase an all-time record 25th Grand Slam singles title.

He also made clear there were no thoughts of this being his final Wimbledon.

He sees Alcaraz and top-ranked Jannik Sinner as the benchmark to meet if he wants to add more significant prizes to his collection.

“I don’t have any limitations in my mind. I still want to keep going and play as long as I feel like I can play on this high level,” Djokovic said.

“Being able to reach the finals of Wimbledon, of course, it’s a great confidence boost. But I also feel like in a match-up today against (the) best player right now in the world for sure, other than Jannik … I feel like I’m not at that level.