CHENNAI: THE future is a 21-year-old Spaniard who has just won his third Major and first in Paris. Arise, Carlos Alcaraz Garfia, the boy from El Palmar in Murcia. Even as he started winning big titles, including a first Major as a teenager in 2022, he was still being referred to in the future tense.
“Wait for your time,” was seemingly the message. “It will come. For the time being though, Novak Djokovic and Rafa Nadal would continue to hold centrestage.”
On the tournament’s first Monday, Nadal, seemingly in the December third week of his career, lost in the first round in a postcode he has owned for the majority of the last two decades. Djokovic prevailed in a titanic tussle but was so broken he couldn’t even take to court in the quarterfinals.
His opponent, Alexander Zverev, is of course no stranger to monikers as such as the one bestowed on the Spaniard. For a brief while, he was considered as the next big thing in men’s tennis. That, though, is the past. Right now, Alcaraz is the present and will be a big part of the future of men’s tennis. On an era-making Sunday — Alcaraz became the youngest man to win Majors on all three surfaces (hard, grass and, now, clay) — the 21-year-old, in dying natural light prevailed in stunning fashion.
He neutralised the Alexander Zverev first serve to clinch the first set 3-6 before the German began to impose himself in the match. An aggressive approach worked for him as he won the next two sets. Worryingly, Alcaraz began to feel his thigh but almost won a blowout fourth set as the German’s first serve percentages dipped below 60 percent. In a see-saw fifth set, Alcaraz broke the German twice before winning the match. The match itself may not have been high on quality — it was almost a repeat of the Zverev-Dominic Thiem US Open final in this metric — but Alcaraz will not wonder about that.