Alcaraz, 19, poised to become next big star
PARIS — When the future No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero was 19, he came to Roland Garros for the 1999 French Open qualifying tournament and lost in the first round.
His pupil, Carlos Alcaraz, is on a more accelerated timetable. At 19, Alcaraz has arrived in Paris as the No. 6 seed in the main draw and one of the clear favorites.
With his all-action style, Alcaraz, the emotive Spanish teenager, plays as if plugged into some renewable source of energy and already has won four titles this season. He beat Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic back-to-back on red clay in nerve-jangling duels in Madrid that seemed as much a tribute to Alcaraz’s appetite for combat as to his incandescent talent.
Friday, two days before the start of the French Open, a photo of Alcaraz, roaring with his right fist clenched, occupied almost all the front page of L’Équipe, the leading French sports publication.
The word is justifiably out. Now, it is time to learn whether Alcaraz, who is in the top half of a top-heavy men’s draw, can manage the moment and the grind of best-of-five-set matches in just his sixth Grand Slam tournament.
“If everything stays normal, and there is no injury, I think he is absolutely ready for best of five,” Ferrero said in an interview this week. He added: “His character on the court is so big. He loves to go for the big points and for the big moment and is one of the few guys that you can see who is like this.”
Since the Big Three — Nadal, Djokovic and Roger Federer — took collective command of the men’s game in the late 2000s, this is the first time that a nextgeneration player has come into a major men’s tournament with this level of buzz and momentum.
“It seems to me, he’s not feeling the pressure, but let’s see when the time comes,” Ferrero said. “I have experience with that. I talk to him a lot. I think his commitment to practice and compete is the same as ever. So, let’s see where the limit is for him. And let’s see if he has no limits.”
Ferrero, 42, who won the 2003 French Open and was ranked No. 1 the same year, knows more than most about scaling tennis summits. He has coached Alcaraz since 2018 out of his academy in Villena, Spain, in the stark countryside near Alicante that is long on dust and hilltop castles and short on modern-age distractions.
When he is not traveling on tour, Alcaraz, who is from El Palmar, a suburb of Murcia, boards at the academy on weekdays before making the hourlong drive to spend weekends with his family.
“Here we are really tranquilo,” or calm, Alcaraz said in a recent interview in Villena. “Here it’s tennis, tennis and more tennis. The town is five minutes away by car, but in reality it’s farther than that.”
Ferrero has been well aware of Alcaraz’s potential since he first saw him in a low-level professional tournament in Murcia at age 14. Ferrero has taken a considered and caring approach to developing Alcaraz’s game. They are clearly close, which showed during the Miami Open in March when Ferrero surprised Alcaraz before the final after traveling from Spain following his father’s funeral.
In training, the focus is on accentuating Alcaraz’s varied game: He spends a great deal of time at the net and in transition, not just at the baseline. In terms of hours on court, the goal is quality over quantity, which preserves Alcaraz’s body for the long run while emphasizing intensity.
“The way you practice will affect the way you play,” Alcaraz said. “If you don’t train every ball with that intensity and seriousness, how are you going to know how to do it in a match?”
Alcaraz was only 2 years old at that point and not yet pounding balls obsessively in El Palmar against the hitting wall at his family’s sports club. But Alcaraz does remember the 2013 French Open semifinal, when Djokovic was up a break of serve on Nadal in the fifth set only to lose his edge and the match after dropping a point for touching the net after tapping a seemingly routine overhead winner.
“I watched plenty of tennis, but that’s my first really clear memory of a match,” Alcaraz said.
Nine years later, he looks like the biggest threat to Nadal and Djokovic at Roland Garros, where all three of them are in the top half of the draw. Alcaraz is clearly at home on hardcourts — he won the Miami Open this year — but grew up training almost exclusively on clay.
“I see Carlos as a blend of the Big Three,” said Craig O’Shannessy, an Australian tennis-analytics specialist who was part of Struff’s team last year. “You’ve got the mentality and tenacity of Nadal and the exquisite timing and willingness to come to the net of Federer. And then you have the aggressive baseline play like Djokovic: the power and flexibility to hit big off both sides from the backcourt.”