- Sir Andy Murray played his last competitive match at Wimbledon this year
- Nick Kyrgios and Ash Barty were both excellent in their coverage on the BBC
- Barbora Krejcikova won the women's singles title after a thrilling finale
The 2024 Wimbledon Championships came to a close on Sunday, with Carlos Alcaraz defeating Novak Djokovic in the men's singles final for the second year running.
Twenty-four hours earlier, Barbora Krejcikova overcame Jasmine Paolini in a thrilling women's singles showpiece.
It was a tournament of highs and lows, which Mail Sport's MATTHEW LAMBERT has rounded up below.
Highs
Murray's farewell
Andy Murray wanted to play the singles but couldn't. He wanted to play the mixed doubles with Emma Raducanu but her withdrawal nixed that, too.
Yet perhaps it was all for the best because his farewell to the All England Club alongside his brother Jamie felt note-perfect.
It was wonderful to have Sue Barker back on Centre Court and Murray spoke so well in their exchange.
That line: 'I want to play forever. I love this sport,' is a fitting epitaph to his Wimbledon career.
The women's singles finale
The top female players continue to struggle at the All England Club – Barbora Krejcikova was the seventh first-time winner in a row – but the absence of superstar names did not detract from a thrilling climax to the women's event.
For the first time in the Open Era, both semi-finals and the final all went to a deciding set.
Jasmine Paolini's semi-final against Donna Vekic was the longest Wimbledon semi-final ever and the match of the tournament, a draining, 2hr 51min epic.
And Krejcikova's emotional victory in the final, under the star of her mentor Jana Novotna, was a poetic finale.
New blood in the box
The addition to the BBC booth of Nick Kyrgios was the talk of the town but – as engaging and articulate as he was – his fellow Aussie and 2021 champion Ash Barty was the best new signing.
Calm, insightful and with that twinkle in her eye that we saw on the court, she was a breath of clean Queensland air.
Although seeing her standing next to Centre Court was a reminder of the blow dealt to tennis when the most stylish racketeer of her generation retired at the age of just 25.
Lows
The Brits
There were 18 British players in the first round of the singles this year and that is good news – even if 12 of those were wildcards.
The bad news is only Raducanu made it into the second week. What was especially disappointing is how many excellent positions were allowed to slip away.
Harriet Dart led 3-0 in the deciding set of her fourth round; Arthur Fery was two sets to one up and Paul Jubb led by two sets and a break.
The weather
Things picked up over the weekend but for the first 10 days this felt like the Wimbledon indoor Championships.
The rain and cold were grim for the non-showcourt spectators and the humid, dewy conditions under the roof made the surface slippery, surely contributing to a slew of injuries.
he bitterest blow, both to the player and the tournament, was the hip injury suffered by Alex de Minaur in the final points of his fourth-round match, which forced him to withdraw from his quarter-final with Novak Djokovic.
It will take a while to forget the haunted look the Aussie cast up to his box as he sat in his chair after that pyrrhic victory over Arthur Fils.
Iga Swiatek
Once again the pre-eminent player in the women's game floated through Wimbledon without leaving any imprint on the grass.
She is far too good a player to be regarded as a clay-court specialist and her record of only one Grand Slam final outside Roland Garros is hardly befitting her talents.
Swiatek has played only one grass-court tournament outside SW19 in the last three years and lost in the third round here to an admittedly inspiring Yulia Putintseva.
It is high time she follows her idol Rafael Nadal's example and recalibrates her game to the grass.