Novak Djokovic defeats Roger Federer for third Wimbledon title

This time, Roger Federer wasn’t even able to get it into a fifth set, wasn’t able to turn the tables on Novak Djokovic from a break down in the fourth set, as he had in last year’s Wimbledon final.

And so, for the second straight year and the third time, the Serbian superstar, ranked No. 1 in the world for obvious reasons, took the coveted title at Wimbledon.

The score was 7-6 (1), 6-7 (10), 6-4, 6-3.

If this was the soon-to-be-34-year-old Federer’s last gasp on the big stage, his second set will be a nice memory of the player most consider to be the best of all time, considering he has won the most Grand Slam titles at 17.

In that set second set, Federer survived a set point at 4-5, then six more in a tiebreaker that he somehow won at 12-10 on his second set point.

It had Centre Court rocking and rolling, because Federer is as popular here as anybody ever has been.

Buy Djokovic immediately got back to work in the third and fourth sets and his impenetrable baseline play was the difference, as it was last year here.

The Federer-Djokovic rivalry -- despite their age difference (Djokovic is 28) -- is among the greatest in all of sports. The Serb’s victory Sunday gave him a 20-20 record against Federer.

Federer, gracious as always, said afterward: “Novak played great today. He played great the whole two weeks, the whole season, all of last season, and last year here…and I didn’t play bad myself, either.”

Djokovic said Federer remained “my biggest challenge.…He makes you push your limits.”

Twitter: @DwyreLATimes