How the Titles Were Won: Skill Breakdown of the 2023 Wimbledon Finals

Another Wimbledon is behind us and two new All England Club champions have been crowned. Each finals victory was surprising in its own way, with neither Carlos Alcaraz or Marketa Vondrousova the clear favorites going into the finals. What were the strongest areas of each champion’s performance? And in what ways did they exceed expectations the most? Let’s dive into the stats of each victory to see.

The men’s final was the Djokovic-Alcaraz meeting we were all waiting for. After the disappointment at the 2023 French Open, when cramps hindered Alcaraz’s ability to play to his level against Djokovic, the title-deciding 5-setter on Wimbledon’s Centre Court was the competitive salve we were after. Things looked shaky for Alcaraz in the first set, when he only managed to get one game on the scoreboard. But he didn’t get bogged down by the score and quickly turned things around with an early break in the second, which set the tone for the rest of the match.

Using You Cannot Be Serious Stats skill ratings, we can see what the win expectations were on first and second serve (and return) for Djokovic and Alcaraz ahead of their meeting in the final. Because the skill-based expectations also account for opponent skill, they provide a useful way to gauge what each player actually managed to achieve on the day. Overall, on both serve and return, we see that Alcaraz played above expectation while Djokovic under-performed (Figure 1). Against the 23-time Major champion, Alcaraz was expected to win 59% on serve, however, after five sets, his serve win percentage was 63%. As you might imagine it was the reverse situation for Novak, who was expected to win 64% of points but was only at 60% by the last point of the match.

Figure 1. Difference in actual and expected points won for serve and return points in the Men’s 2023 Wimbledon final.

When we look at the split by first and second serve (Figure 1), we see that each player’s overall performance was largely driven by what happened on first serve and first return. This is due to first serves making up the majority of points for each competitor: for Alcaraz, first serve points made up 63% of his points on serve, for Djokovic 64%. By stepping up and surpassing his win expectations on first serve by 3 percentage points, Alcaraz had a major impact on his win prospects. But the even greater impact was on first return, where the combination of Alcaraz’s defense and Novak’s inability to find an answer to it, put Novak’s first serve win percentage at just 62%, 12 percentage points below expectation.

Alcaraz’s return performance in the final continued a trend that started with Nicolas Jarry in R32, a trend that saw Carlos consistently out-performing the already high expectations for his return points won. This trend is not only testament to Alcaraz’s hyper ability to learn from each new experience on tour but also a sign that surface-specific experience doesn’t have to be extensive for some players to just ‘get’ how to play on grass. If we needed any more proof that Alcaraz is a triple threat on all major surfaces, taking the Wimbledon title from Novak Djokovic should settle that score for good.

On the women’s side it was another missed opportunity for Ons Jabeur. This time around was even more heart-wrenching than her loss in the 2022 Wimbledon final to Elena Rybakina because Jabeur – who consecutively defeated four former Grand Slam champions to get to the final – was so clearly the superior player on grass. But even the strongest players can falter on any given day, especially in a best of three format where a slow start can put leave you with just a set from losing a match in a matter of minutes.

When we look at the actual and expected breakdowns by serve and return, the deficits on Jabeur’s serve are stark (Figure 2). Jabeur was expected to dominate on serve with a 77% serve win percentage, but after 60 service points she had won only 47%. In this case, the gaps on serve were seen on both the first and second serve. On first, Jabeur’s win percentage was 48%, on second, just 46%, both well below what she was anticipated to achieve against Vondrousova. These deficits on Jabeur’s serve gave an open door to Vondrousova who only needed to play a solid match to walk through.

Figure 2. Difference in actual and expected points won for serve and return points in the Women’s 2023 Wimbledon final.

The topic of ‘choking’ inevitably comes up in any of the high-stakes matches of the calendar. It is true that both the favored players were defeated on the men’s and women’s sides. Yet a defeat on a major occasion isn’t in itself proof that the favorite choked. The contrast in Jabeur and Djokovic’s performance in the finals illustrate how each loss is unique in its own way. For Jabeur’s part, her serve performance was so far below expectation that she couldn’t have simply been outplayed. By contrast, the margins separating Djokovic and Alcaraz were small enough that the outcome was well within the possible outcomes of a clash with a still-improving young rival.

Four dramatically different narratives left Centre Court after the end of finals weekend at Wimbledon. Two unanticipated victories along side two shock defeats. How each competitor will respond to their experience in London is the kind of drama that draws us to sport and what should make for some intriguing stories in the final months of the 2023 tennis season.