Carlos Alcaraz
needed to get rid of the feeling of having been in trouble in his debut at the
Masters 1000 in Indian Wells
.
And boy did he achieve it.
The current champion got rid of the Canadian
Felix Auger-Aliassime
in 78 minutes , one of the few players with whom he has a negative balance, and now he was 2-3 in the confrontations between them thanks to a resounding 6-2 and 6-3 in the third round.
“I think I moved well, I played aggressively and with fewer mistakes.
It was almost a perfect match.
It was my first day game and the conditions are completely different from those at night.
The ball moves through the air faster: it's totally another tournament,” he described.
The world number two acknowledged that he went through difficult times in his tournaments in South America, where he also sprained his right ankle in Rio de Janeiro.
“After Buenos Aires, I didn't play good tennis.
My confidence went down a bit and I've been having trouble during training each day trying to keep my confidence as high as I can.
I try to be myself every day,” he argued.
“In the first match (in Indian Wells) I had some problems in the first set.
I didn't play my tennis, but I found good parts to start playing a little better and today was really a good match from the beginning to the last ball.
So that helped my confidence and my tennis a lot,” he added.
Now he will face Hungarian
Fabian Marozsan
in the round of 16 , who beat him last year at the Rome Masters 1,000.
“After that loss I felt really bad.
After that match I really wanted a rematch with him,” said Alcaraz about his future rival, who eliminated the Chilean
Nicolás Jarry
in the second round and beat the Brazilian
Thiago Seyboth Wild
yesterday by a double 6-2.
The Greek
Stefanos Tsitsipas
defeated the American Frances Tiafoe by a double 6-3, while the Australian
Alex De Miñaur
beat the Kazakh
Alexander Bublik
by 7-5 and 6-0.
Later, the Italian
Jannik Sinner
(3rd) confirmed his enormous present with a 6-3 and 6-4 against the German
Jan-Lennard Struff
.
Francisco Cerúndolo plays in the Argentine dawn against the American Ben Shelton, while Sebastián Báez will face the American Taylor Fritz today after having beaten the Italian Fabio Fognini 7-5 and 6-3 in his debut.
Among the ladies, Nadia Podoroska was eliminated yesterday in the third round by a double 6-1 by the Russian Anastasia Potapova.
Poland's Iga Swiatek, world number one, also advanced to the round of 16.