FROM FOUR GRAND SLAMS TO A DAUNTING 25, CARLOS ALCARAZ NEEDED A BREAK
He doesn’t want to play tennis right now, despite winning major titles at 21, and his coach should have recognized the problem before Alcaraz was mauled by the 74th-ranked player at the U.S. Open
This could be a crooked finger in a bustling career of 25 major championships. Or, will Carlos Alcaraz require contemplative mental gymnastics to ponder tennis history? It makes no sense to lose Thursday night in the second round of the U.S. Open, to 74th-ranked Botic van de Zandschulp, when he had won 15 straight Grand Slam matches and was looking at his third magnificent run this year.
He wanted five Slams. Instead, he’s stuck at four and might let Novak Djokovic, back from the expired, to win his 25th next week as the sterling silver numbers king. Be fair and remember Alcaraz is only 21. But before play began at Flushing Meadows, he said his ambition is to match Djokovic in digits and prominence.
“Colossal,” he said of winning more than two dozen majors. “I want to follow what he has done always in his career, which is getting better and improving, showing up at the court playing at his best level.”
Are we scrutinizing yet another prodigy in progress? Jannik Sinner, 23, is inspected nervously as he plays without a suspension after testing positive twice for Clostebol, a banned anabolic steroid. Now here’s Alcaraz, pointing at his temple as he stared at his coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, wondering what happened to his mind. He grabbed his bag and departed for the locker room after losing the first two sets, then returned to lose the third. Was he burned out? Playing too much after remarkable success? He lost the Olympics final to Djokovic and cried at Roland Garros.
“It's painful to lose the way I lost this match. I had my chances to probably be up in the match. I couldn’t take it,” Alcaraz said that day in Paris. “Novak was playing great. He deserves this. In the tough moments, he increased his level. He played unbelievable shots, an unbelievable game. I gave everything I had. Fighting for Spain was everything to me.”
Rather than take time off, Alcaraz played in Cincinnati. He smashed his racket on the court and lost his opening match in three sets to Gael Monfils, then complained that the surface was “insane.” Didn’t Ferrero notice a problem? “I felt like it was the worst match that I have ever played in my career. Couldn’t play, honestly,” he said.
He played uglier in New York. “So tight,” Alcaraz said. “Probably, I came here with not as much energy as I thought that I was going to have. But, I mean, I don’t want to put that as an excuse.”
What’s the issue? After thrashing Djokovic at Wimbledon on July 14, he was the king. Six weeks later, with three losses, he can’t play anymore?
“It was a fight against myself, in my mind, during the match. In tennis, you are playing against someone that wants the same as you — to win the match — and you have to be as ... calm as you can, just to think better in the match and try to do good things,” Alcaraz said. “Today I was playing against the opponent, and I was playing against myself, in my mind. A lot of emotions that I couldn’t control.”
As Alcaraz fades into 2025, van de Zandschulp carries on and somehow hopes to play Sinner in the Open semifinals. “Actually, I am at a loss for words,” he said. Unlike Fernando Tatis Jr., the baseball star who was heckled at Yankee Stadium after testing positive for Clostebol and serving an 80-game suspension, Sinner hasn’t been mocked much in New York. “It means a lot to me. The support is always amazing — so, thank you everyone for coming and staying,” he said. If he plays Djokovic in the final, we’ll watch and wonder if Novak ever was tempted to use steroids. He’s 37 and is 14 years older than Sinner.
For now, he wants one more photo opportunity with a trophy. “People would ask me: ‘Now that you have basically won everything with the golden (Olympics) medal, what else is there to win?’ I still feel the drive. I still have the competitive spirit,” he said. “I still want to make more history and enjoy myself on the tour. The goal is always for me to try and go all the way to the finals and fight for the trophy. That kind of mindset or approach is no different for me this year.”
I’m thinking. Is Alcaraz wearing too many tank-top outfits, somewhat unusual? Too much prosperity too soon? Is he ready to rule tennis for most of the next two decades?
Or did he just need a damned break?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.