After his disappointment in the Paris Olympics final, Carlos Alcaraz will make his debut at the Masters 1000 in Cincinnati tomorrow. The Spanish champion has taken a few days off in Mallorca after winning the silver medal in Paris, an exceptional result despite losing to Novak Djokovic in the final.
The last two months have been fantastic for Carlitos, who has won the French Open and Wimbledon Championships becoming the youngest ever to do this feat in the same year. The 21-year-old from Murcia missed the Masters 1000 in Montreal last week to rest and now hopes to get a good result in Ohio.
Alcaraz will defend the final reached in Cincinnati last year, when he surrendered to Novak Djokovic at the end of one of the most spectacular matches of the whole year. The four-time Grand Slam champion has no easy path in Ohio and will have to be careful from the start. Carlos’ first opponent will be the winner of the match between Gael Monfils and Alexei Popyrin, who has just won in Montreal winning the first Masters 1000 of his career.
Alcaraz’s goal is to play as many matches as possible to reach the top of form at the US Open, the last Grand Slam of the season. The former world number 1 has some great memories of New York, where he won his first Major title in 2022. Despite being just 21, Carlos Alcaraz has already shown that he can become one of the best players ever.
Ion Tiriac reflects on Carlitos
During a long interview with ‘We Love Tennis’, Ion Tiriac spoke about Carlitos: “He’s a talented player, he’s sensational, he has incredible speed and power, but I think we’re doing too much around him, that we already want to reap the benefits economically when we’re just starting our career. You have to be much more patient, leave him alone because the dollars that we earn today is nothing compared to what we can «earn» in a few years.”
The Spaniard has won four Grand Slam titles and 5 Masters 1000, as well as being number 1 in the world for 36 weeks. Before the start of the Cincinnati Masters 1000, Alcaraz recalled his experience with Rafael Nadal at the Paris Olympics: “It was a great experience, talking with Rafa off the court, knowing each other much better off the court. It was a great experience, obviously, playing doubles together. It was great,” Alcaraz stated during his press conference Sunday in Cincinnati. “It was something that I will never forget, for sure. I learned a lot talking to him on court, off the court as well. I think we played a great tennis in doubles, even if we are not used to playing doubles very often.
A little bit disappointing at the end, because we thought that we could do it better, but in general, we were happy. And obviously talking about myself, I reached my dream, my dream came true, playing doubles alongside Rafa. I always want to be better. I always think that I could do it better. Obviously, I had a great summer: Roland Garros, Wimbledon, silver in the Olympics.
Obviously, I wanted the gold medal,” Alcaraz said. “After the matches, if I win or I lose, I like to find the bad things that I did in the matches, try to be better, try to in the next match not make the same mistakes in the shots or dealing with some situations. And that’s what happened. That’s what I saw in the final in Paris, that I couldn’t deal with the situations as good as I wanted, and that’s what I was thinking after the match, just to be better, and probably being harder on myself.”
Alcaraz learns from his mistakes
In the final of the Paris Olympics, Carlitos was less good than Djokovic at managing the decisive moments and suffered the effect of his nerves. The Serbian legend has used his greater experience and played better in the two tiebreaks thanks to the serve and the forehand.
Despite winning a lot in the last two months, the young Spaniard feels he can play even better: “Probably most of the matches I won, I won them without playing great tennis, or I felt like I didn’t play really great tennis. The way that I approach every match, I stay there strong mentally in some situations, I’m really, really happy about that.
[I’m happy] about the way that I [handled] some situations, that I stayed there, even knowing that I didn’t play, or I wasn’t playing great tennis. But [I played] with a positive attitude, with the right face always and trying to find solutions in some moments that I could do it. I’m really happy about it.”
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