Whoever decided to see Carlos Alcaraz live this week, at the US Open, has given up 13 hours and 28 minutes of sleep in his three five-
set matches
.
It is not my case: I am a diurnal animal, I fall like a log at midnight, but my sleep is pre-industrial and I wake up in a half-sleep after 4 or 5 hours of deep sleep.
After a while of daydreaming, I fall another two hours.
Until, this week, I decided to open the tablet to see how Alcaraz was doing.
There have been three shots of caffeine at 4 in the morning.
Neither doze, nor daydream, nor anything.
In addition, the ball does not look good on the tablet and I have ended up in the living room in front of the television lamenting the mistakes, moaning silently, and celebrating the successes with muffled screams.
Tennis demands positioning and empathy.
And you had to push, because this 19-year-old was up against 25,000 Tiafoe-mad Americans.
These semi-clandestine early-morning matches can be experienced live, sacrificing sleep, or recorded, when the result is already known.
Or the hybrid model, which is mine.
The duels at this level are like a well-crafted
thriller
in which your hero experiences situations on the edge of the abyss, to end up winning or losing.
With Nadal we have become accustomed to happy endings after tremendous agonies;
It also happens with Alcaraz, although we see it more calmly because we feel that he has time ahead of him.
Losing a first
set
with a double fault is the closest you get in tennis to looking like a fool.
And to overcome that, with Michelle Obama cheering in the public, is a test of character.
Or let a
match ball
slip at the end of the fourth
set
, to let the local hero revive and make it to the fifth.
To dominate him again and close the game in a big way, without arguments.
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Carlos Alcaraz and the squad that hides behind his dazzling success
In tennis, we already know, the most important thing is the brain.
But not only the player.
In the success of Carlos Alcaraz they add his concentration, daring and ability to react;
but also the advice of his coach Juan Carlos Ferrero, who was already number one in the world in 2003, after winning Roland Garros and being a finalist in the US Open —"take the second to the center if you are not sure", he told him in the second
set
against Tiafoe, breaking his moment of doubt—;
or the attitude of his father, a good junior player, and his family, capable of discreetly managing success from Murcia and entrusting the career of his son to third parties.
All of them have helped us to find ourselves before a phenomenon of this sport.
"The goal in 2022 is to consolidate among the top 15 and try to reach the Master," Ferrero said in January.
This Sunday, against a serious rival like the Norwegian Casper Ruud, he may become the youngest number one in history, and the youngest, since Nadal in 2005 -Alcaraz was two years old-, to win a Grand Slam tournament .
The objectives, obviously, have fallen short.
Carlos Alcaraz is unique.
Neither Nadal can be compared (although he has his humility and sense of work), nor Federer (although he has a hand as fast as him and also looks for winning shots piecemeal), nor Djokovic (although his mobility and his game of feet is as extraordinary as yours).
In January 2022, in a report in
The New York Times
entitled "Carlos Alcaraz is about to cause a great commotion in tennis", his entourage already explained that his obsession was physical preparation for those five-
set
matches , decisive in the elite.
Vision, it's called that.
And besides, he's charismatic.
That is not taught or learned.
It comes from the factory.
That hit from behind against Sinner (and his subsequent gallop to respond to the dropshot) to win a point and grinning a finger in the air, as the crowd literally jumped out of their seats in disbelief….it's a moment only the greatest they know how to offer
It is a shared enjoyment, happy, joyful, accomplice with the thousands of spectators.
It is a joy that the fresh air that is going to revolutionize tennis comes again from Spain.
First Rafael Nadal, then Carlos Alcaraz, and let's see what happens with Martín Landaluce, the best junior in the world.
If Alcaraz wins today, it would be the third Spanish Grand Slam of the year after Nadal's two.
We are privileged.
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