In a nod to sport, Spanish tennis player Carlos Alcaraz has it in his hand to become the youngest world number one in history on Sunday on the same stage, the US Open, where his mentor Juan Carlos Ferrero crowned that peak in 2003.
Alcaraz, born in May of that same 2003, will play the final of the US Open on Sunday against the Norwegian Casper Ruud, finalist of the last Roland Garros.
The winner of the battle will have the double prize of raising his first Grand Slam title and replacing Daniil Medvedev in the ATP leadership.
Until now, no tennis player has assaulted the world number one in Flushing Meadows (New York) since Ferrero did it on September 6, 2003.
In his case, he mathematically secured first place in the semifinals with his exciting victory against the local Andre Agassi, who was fighting in front of his public for his third title in New York, an experience that Alcaraz is now taking advantage of.
“We’ve talked a lot about it. He told me how they prepared for that game,” the Spaniard acknowledged after making it through the semi-finals on Friday night.
“He told me how they prepared for that match. I’m going to do the same, which is go for it. It doesn’t matter what I’m fighting for, I’m just going for it and enjoying the moment,” he said.
Ferrero, in another of the many parallels with his student, had eliminated Australian Lleyton Hewitt a round earlier, the tennis player whom Alcaraz could overtake on Sunday as the earliest world number one.
In his final at Flushing Meadows, Ferrero failed to crown his dream US Open as he fell to American Andy Roddick, but memories of those successes came back to haunt him this week.
After Alcaraz’s victory against Jannik Sinner on Wednesday, “I went alone on the court for a while to remember the sensations of the match, relax a bit and remember my whole story,” Ferrero explained to the Ser channel. “I remembered games in which I managed to be number one, against Agassi, with the whole public against”.
– A personal bet –
Retired in 2012 with a Grand Slam title (Roland Garros in 2003), Ferrero is the key figure in the formation and meteoric career of Alcaraz.
After a brief stage training Alexander Zverev, who ended up disillusioned by the lack of discipline of the German promise, Ferrero took on the challenge of personally training Alcaraz in 2018 when he was just 15 years old.
The teenager from El Palmar, a town of 20,000 inhabitants, has been hitting rackets since he was a child at the tennis school run by his father and in 2018 he had won European and Spanish titles in lower categories.
At that time Alcaraz was already under the wing of Albert Molina, agent of the multinational IMG and architect of the careers of other Spanish players such as Pablo Carreño.
Molina established the link between Alcaraz and Ferrero, who ruled out offers to train other jewels and welcomed the teenager into his academy in Villena (Valencia) – 120 kilometers from El Palmar (Murcia) – excited about the budding talent, humility and ability of effort of Alcaraz.
Little by little, his development began to draw the attention of both the figures with whom he trained and big brands such as Nike or Rolex, who rushed to secure the sponsorship of the young prodigy.
The team around Alcaraz was also professionalizing and growing and soon had a physical trainer, a physiotherapist and the support of psychologists and doctors.
For the tennis player, Ferrero is much more than a coach. In addition to the professional bond, in which they work hand in hand on the court and in the gym, both maintain a close personal relationship and play golf together to relax.
For once, Ferrero was unable to accompany Alcaraz on his April tour of the Miami Masters 1000 due to the passing of his father.
The coach, however, surprised his enthusiastic pupil by appearing at his hotel a few hours before the final he played and won precisely against Ruud, the last obstacle for both to close the circle of number one.
gbv/cl
