Carlos Alcaraz, during his debut at the Open 500 in Hamburg, this Tuesday. /
The Murcian makes his debut with victory at the Open 500 in Hamburg, the first tournament in which he is the top seed
Carlos Alcaraz made his debut at the Open 500 in Hamburg with a more than hard-fought victory. The Murcian tennis player has been forced to come back against the German Nicola Kuhn, trained in Spain, to seal a score of 3-6, 6-1 and 7-6 (3) in almost two and a half hours of play. A marathon match decided in a heart-stopping final tie break was the script for his debut in a tournament as the first seed.
The one from El Palmar, who reappeared after falling in the round of 16 at Wimbledon against Jannick Sinner on July 3, did not have a good match and thus admitted it to the media: «I came from playing on grass, I had little time to prepare and I knew that the first meetings were going to be complicated. I am very happy that I was able to win and I think I will do better in the second round.
Kuhn is a rival who knows Alcaraz well. Not in vain, he has passed through the academy directed by Juan Carlos Ferrero, coach of the Murcian and in which the tennis player himself resides. Born in Innsbruck (Austria), of a German father and a Russian mother, he grew up in the province of Alicante. He represented Spain since he was a junior, but last year he decided to bet on the German team. He played today, therefore, with the public in favor. At 22 years old, he is number 259 in the ATP, but he has become 174. His story is one of the countless talents who never made the final leap.
The records you can get
After his gray match, Carlos only thinks about continuing to progress on the German clay. At 19 years old, he has the possibility of breaking another good handful of records ahead of him. If he lifts the title, the Murcian will appear on Monday in fourth place in the world, the youngest in history to achieve it. He now he is number six. It must be remembered that at the beginning of the year he set himself the goal of finishing in the top fifteen, something that he has already more than achieved.
If he manages to win in Hamburg, a championship that has other great players such as Andrei Rublev, Pablo Carreño or Karen Kachanov, Alcaraz will lift his fifth title of the season, something that only Rafa Nadal did at his age. The one from El Palmar has already lifted the ATP 500 in Rio de Janeiro and Barcelona and the Masters 1000 in Miami and Madrid. He would be the tennis player with the most titles (the Balearic also has four) with half the season over.
