Novak Djokovic has moved to within two sets of a record-equalling eighth Wimbledon title after racing to the first set 6-1 against Carlos Alcaraz in Sunday’s championship match.

The Serbian produced a masterful first-set performance on Centre Court, where his clean, deep returning piled the pressure on Alcaraz’s delivery. Djokovic converted two of his six break points to deliver an early statement in the pair’s third Lexus ATP Head2Head series. Alcaraz, whose huge groundstrokes helped him reach his maiden Wimbledon final for the loss of just two sets, was unable to penetrate his opponent’s defence with any kind of regularity.

Should Djokovic go on to complete victory at the All England Club, he would lift a record-extending 24th major trophy and stay on course for a historic calendar-year Grand Slam after his victories earlier in the year at the Australian Open and Roland Garros. He would also leapfrog Alcaraz on Monday to reclaim No. 1 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings on Monday, with Sunday’s final clash a winner-takes-all shootout for top spot.

After a fortnight of major action at Wimbledon, the 2023 season rolls on with Bastad, Gstaad and Newport hosting ATP 250 events from 17-23 July.

Casper Ruud leads the field at the Nordea Open, where Andrey Rublev and Alexander Zverev will also be competing on the Bastad clay. Roberto Bautista Agut is the top seed at another clay event, the EFG Swiss Open Gstaad, which also features home favourite Stan Wawrinka and former champion Dominic Thiem.

Newport, Rhode Island plays host to the final grass-court action of the 2023 season. Home favourite Tommy Paul is the top seed at the Infosys Hall of Fame Open, where Maxime Cressy is the defending champion and Kevin Anderson makes his return from retirement.

ATPTour.com looks ahead at five things to watch at each event.

View Draws: Bastad | Gstaad | Newport

FIVE THINGS TO WATCH IN BASTAD
1) Ruud Top Seed: The World No. 4 Ruud returns to the Nordea Open looking to bounce back from his second-round exit at Wimbledon. The Norwegian will compete in familiar surroundings in Bastad, where he lifted the trophy in 2021. Ruud’s first match on clay since the Roland Garros final will be against Juan Manuel Cerundolo or Alexander Shevchenko.

2) Rublev Returns: Rublev reached the semi-finals on his Bastad debut in 2022 and the World No. 7 returns as the second seed in Sweden. The 25-year-old is 35-14 for the year after reaching his maiden Wimbledon quarter-final and has enjoyed plenty of success on clay in 2023, including lifting his maiden ATP Masters 1000 crown in April in Monte-Carlo.

3) Musetti, Zverev Feature: Lorenzo Musetti chases his first Bastad match win in three appearances, and the 21-year-old Italian faces a tough opening test against Emil Ruusuvuori or his in-form countryman Matteo Arnaldi. A stacked field also features former World No. 2 Zverev, who returns to the ATP 250 for the first time since he reached the semi-finals in 2015.

4) Cerundolo Defends Title: The unseeded Francisco Cerundolo charged to his maiden ATP Tour crown last year with a string of big-hitting performances in Bastad. The 24-year-old returns as the fourth seed in Sweden, where he is looking to maintain his form after he lifted his first tour-level grass title two weeks ago in Eastbourne. 

5) Martin/Mies Lead Doubles Draw: Fabrice Martin and Andreas Mies are the top-seeded doubles team on the Swedish coast, where their rivals include 2021 winners Sander Arends/David Pel and second seeds Sander Gille/Joran Vliegen, who triumphed in 2019. Third seeds Alexander Erler/Lucas Miedler seek their third ATP Tour crown of the season. 

FIVE THINGS TO WATCH IN GSTAAD
1) Bautista Agut, Kecmanovic Lead Field: Roberto Bautista Agut was a 2018 finalist at the EFG Swiss Open Gstaad but has won just one match in three subsequent appearances. The Spaniard will hope to be inspired by the stunning Alpine setting for the clay-court ATP 250, where Serbia’s Miomir Kecmanovic is the second seed.

2) Home Favourite Wawrinka: The former World No. 3 Wawrinka competes in Gstaad for the first time in 10 years. The 38-year-old, who lost to Gaston Gaudio in the 2005 final and holds a 9-10 record at the event, arrives in his homeland off the back of a third-round run at Wimbledon.

3) Thiem Chases Second Gstaad Title: Dominic Thiem enters Gstaad chasing his first tour-level win since April in Madrid. The Austrian, who lifted the title in the Swiss Alps in 2015, is 7-15 for the year, but showed signs of his best form two weeks ago by pushing Stefanos Tsitsipas to five sets at Wimbledon. Thiem’s first-round opponent is Alexandre Muller.

4) #NextGenATP Battle: Arthur Fils and home wild card Dominic Stricker meet in an exciting first-round clash in Switzerland. The 19-year-old Frenchman Fils is fourth in the Pepperstone ATP Live Next Gen Race, while 2022 Next Gen ATP Finals semi-finalist Stricker is seventh. It will be the pair’s maiden Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting.

5) Swiss Dream Team: Stricker and Wawrinka bring two generations of Swiss talent together in one doubles team for home fans in Gstaad. The duo competes as a wild card duo in a draw that is led by top seeds Marcelo Demoliner/Matwe Middelkoop and second seeds Sadio Doumbia/Fabien Reboul. 

FIVE THINGS TO WATCH IN NEWPORT
1) Home Favourite Paul Leads Field: The 26-year-old Paul makes his Infosys Hall of Fame Open debut as the top seed. The American reached a championship match on grass in Eastbourne two weeks ago before advancing to the third round at Wimbledon. He is aiming to become the 10th American champion in the past 14 editions of the ATP 250 event.

2) Cressy Defends Crown: The most recent of those home winners is Cressy, who recovered from 2-6, 0-3 to down Alexander Bublik and triumph in last year’s final. The 26-year-old will hope to deploy his renowned serve-and-volley game to great effect again as he looks to turn around his 2023 season.

3) Anderson Returns From Retirement: Another former Newport champion, Kevin Anderson, comes out of retirement to compete as a wild card in Rhode Island. The South African, who lifted the trophy in 2021, announced his comeback to the ATP Tour earlier this month, having initially retired last May. The 37-year-old Anderson is a seven-time tour-level champion.

4) Isner Chases Fifth Newport Crown: John Isner holds a 25-6 record in Newport, where he lifted the trophy in 2011, 2012, 2017 and 2019, and the big-serving American returns in pursuit of a record-extending fifth crown at the ATP 250. Other Americans in the field include Mackenzie McDonald, Michael Mmoh and 2018 champion Steve Johnson.

5) Lammons/Withrow Top Seeds: Nathaniel Lammons and Jackson Withrow chase their second ATP Tour title together as the top seeds in Newport. Their rivals on the Rhode Island grass include Adrian Mannarino/Jordan Thompson and Julian Cash/Maxime Cressy, while William Blumberg, who lifted the trophy with Jack Sock in 2021 and Steve Johnson in 2022, plays alongside Max Purcell. 

If you were to watch Mariano Navone, you would likely hear his fellow Argentines chanting, ‘La Navoneta!’ The 22-year-old, who has won two consecutive ATP Challenger Tour titles, received this nickname when he first came onto the scene two years ago.

Then-ranked No. 582 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, Navone was given a wild card at the Buenos Aires Challenger in October 2021. He earned his maiden ATP Challenger Tour victory that week and local fans began to call him ‘La Navoneta’. The nickname has stuck.

“In Argentina, the national football team’s manager is Lionel Scaloni. ‘La Scaloneta’ is the nickname of the team that all of the people in Argentina use,” Navone told ATPTour.com. “So ‘La Navoneta’ is like the same, but with less people because I’m not very famous!

“I enjoy it because the people represent me with that name. The people don’t say, ‘Mariano’, they say ‘La Navoneta!’”

Navone instantly found success at the Challenger level, competing in three finals in his first six tournaments. But he initially struggled to go one step further to stand in the winners’ circle. The 22-year-old has since flipped the script. Navone is riding a 10-match winning streak with triumphs at the Poznan and Santa Fe Challengers.

“It’s unbelievable, two titles in a row. In Poznan, I won my first Top-100 match [against Federico Coria] and my first title. That week was so special,” Navone said. “After I played in Poznan, I went to Wimbledon and there I played bad, it was difficult to play on grass. Then I was happy to win at home [in Santa Fe], it was my first time to win at home. It’s unbelievable, I won the final with my family in the box, and my coach and physio. I played all the matches and didn’t lose a set.

“When I won in Poznan, the first thing I had in my brain was, ‘Relax!’. Now, I’m a champion. I relaxed and then I enjoyed it because of all my work over the years. When I lost the three finals, I lost because I was very nervous. I was very nervous in this final too but I could control it. When I lost the final last year in Villa Maria, I was frustrated because I played three Challenger finals and two Futures finals and I never won. It was difficult in my head.”

Navone, who is at a career-high World No. 164 in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings, stated that the ATP Challenger Tour has been crucial in helping him develop his young career.

“Challengers have changed my life. I made my first final in 2022 in Corrientes. In that moment, I was around 520 in the rankings. The level of Challengers has given me everything,” Navone said. “The matches have a lot of intensity. The competition, the players are so special. They’ve developed my game and mentally. It’s very difficult to win.”

Boasting a 20-13 season record at the Challenger level, the Argentine will next be in action at the Internazionali di Tennis Verona in Italy, where play runs from 24-30 July.

What will Carlos Alcaraz do to relax the day before playing in the Wimbledon final? Juan Carlos Ferrero, the coach of the No. 1 player in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, is in no doubt.

“Little more than we have been doing, there’s no need to create a new routine,” Ferrero said. “Today will be a relaxed day: a little bit of gym, be fresh for tomorrow and try to keep him away from the phone, from anything from the outside. That’s our job. I don’t know if we’ll achieve it because it’s a losing battle, but I advised him yesterday to try and stay away from anything that is said about the final. And, of course, to try and enjoy playing and to fight to the death for the match.”

On Sunday, Alcaraz will take on Novak Djokovic for the Wimbledon title in the second Grand Slam final of his career. Although he won his first, almost a year ago at the US Open (where he defeated Casper Ruud), this time the challenge is even greater: the Serbian has won seven of the last eight finals he has played at the All England Club, where he is currently on a 34-match winning streak.

“If we make the giant even bigger it is impossible to beat him,” Ferrero said. “We’re going to take it to him and forget the stats. He’s a player, with two arms and two legs like us. We have to be at 100 per cent to put on a good match, forgetting about history and the numbers. If we take that baggage with us, it [will be] extremely difficult. Carlos has beaten him once and then there was Paris. He has had both experiences. We hope that the third will be better than the previous two.”

When Ferrero mentions Paris, he is referring to the semi-final between the Spaniard and Serbian one month ago at Roland Garros, where Alcaraz was unable to compete in the third and fourth sets due to severe cramps caused by nerves. Ferrero summed up in one word how the Murcia native should respond to that episode: learn.

“In the end, when you play more times against someone, you learn to handle the rhythm,” Ferrero said. “The situation is similar. Maybe here Djokovic is the favourite and that could benefit Carlos. What we have to do is to get him to play relaxed and fluid. Nobody goes out into a Wimbledon final feeling relaxed from the start, above all because of the difficulties the opponent will create for us.”

Ferrero added: “We have to concentrate more on Carlos, on the problems Djokovic might create for him. We know the level Nole will produce is extremely high. It will kind of depend on Alcaraz’s level.

“The performance he produced against Medvedev was very interesting with a view to Sunday. The opponent is different and the situation is too. In Paris we also had the feeling that he was playing very well and in the end things took a turn for the worse.”

Ferrero also spoke about what else he can do to help Alcaraz before a match of this magnitude, and the future of the 20-year-old on grass, a surface on which he took the title at Queen’s Club this year and where he is now in the Wimbledon final.

“I talk to him more about situations that he may find himself in on court. What he might feel when he walks out for a final or when he might feel the most pressure,” Ferrero said. “I really like to think about the present. Like when people ask me how many majors he’ll win, he has the opportunity to win many. But talking about how many is a mistake. If his body is physically up to it, he has the chance to do great things at this tournament.”