BarcelonaRafa Nadal’s star has not yet faded and a new talent is already shining brightly in Spanish tennis. The young Murcian Carlos Alcaraz, just 19 years old, has made the odds look good by winning the US Open for the first time, defeating the Norwegian Casper Ruud in four sets (6-4, 2-6, 7-6 and 6-3). A triumph that will allow Alcaraz to climb to the top of the ATP ranking. Never had a player so young managed to be number 1, but in the various courts around the world they had been looking at Alcaraz for a long time as they look at a person predestined to make history. “I knew he would be the best, but I didn’t know when he would take the step forward. He has done it now and I think he can win 30 Grand Slam tournaments,” says his coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero. 30 Grand Slam tournaments as a goal, when the player who has won the most, Nadal, has 22.
With this triumph, Alcaraz has become the second youngest player ever to win in the United States, behind Pete Sampras in 1990. It is the fifth title of the season for the young Murcian, who won the Masters 1,000 in Miami and Madrid, as well as the Godó tournament in Barcelona and that in Rio de Janeiro. Incidentally, he will be the sixth Spaniard to be world number 1, leading a new batch of players who want to occupy the space of Nadal, Federer and Djokovic. Young people like Sinner, Tiafoe or Ruud, all of whom were defeated by Alcaraz in New York. “A final of a tournament is not a match to feel tired. I have worked very hard physically and mentally to be able to play these matches like this” said the player, who has become the second in history able to win after needing five sets in the round of 16, quarters and semi-finals. The previous one had been the Swede Steffan Edberg, in 1992. Alcaraz’s name already appears next to those like Sampas, Edberg or Nadal normally. He has burned through stages at an incredible pace.
Alcaraz never looks tired, indeed. That skinny kid who made his debut at Flushing Meadows at the age of 17 has transformed into an athlete with an incredible mindset. He never gives up, specializing in rescuing lost games, by leaving skin to be able to return a ball and turn it into a winning shot. He dominated the first set without suffering, despite the fact that it was his debut in a match like this. Ruud, on the other hand, had already lost the Roland Garros final against Nadal. In the second set, the Murcian lost control of the situation, visibly moved by everything he was experiencing. He was tempted to think that Ruud would take the easy white flag and the Norwegian, a disciple of the Rafa Nadal Academy in Manacor, has come to flirt with the possibility of winning both the second and the third set. In fact, Alcaraz has saved two set balls in the third, reaching the tie break. And in this tournament, he had lost all of them tie breaks played But Alcaraz knows how to suffer and improve. And already won the third set by the fast route, with a 7-1 at tie break which has left Ruud unsettled. Juan Carlos Ferrero, his coach, kept advising his pupil: “Today it’s time to suffer, ball by ball. You have to get the idea that you have to go for the game.” No, Alcaraz is not one of those who can just return balls. The body asks you to be brave, always. With an unconsciousness typical of young people. With such high self-esteem that rivals are already a little scared on the court.
Del club El Palmar a Flushing Meadows
In the stands, his father was biting his nails. Carlos Alcaraz father got to play some tennis tournaments when he was young, but he could not succeed. He loves tennis so much that all of his children received a racket for Christmas when they couldn’t lift a ball off the floor. The young Carlos played his first games when he was just four years old at the Real Sociedad Club de Campo de El Palmar, the district in the south of Murcia where his family lives. A club where more than 400 people have slept little, witnessing live on television how their young neighbor conquered New York. The Alcarazs spend half their lives at this club, as the tennis player’s grandfather was one of its founders. Grandfather taught his grandchildren how to play chess, but Carlos preferred his father’s sport. The racket, of course. A father who today is the sports director of this club that has gone from being a quiet place to being visited by journalists from The New York Times.
Kiko Navarro, the first coach, remembers how “he spent the whole day in the pediment returning balls, either with his father or alone. You could see that he was a special boy, but then who could have told us that a boy from El Palmar would be the best tennis player on the planet?” admit Both he and Alcaraz’s father, however, saw him defeating older kids showing his potential. They saw how the young Alcaraz opened his eyes watching Rafa Nadal’s first matches on television. And they took advantage of the fact that Alfonso López Rueda, the owner of the Murcia company Postres Reina, was a tennis enthusiast who went around the club to ask for help. López Rueda did not hesitate, becoming the sponsor who would provide the money that the Alcarazs did not have to ensure that the boy could dedicate himself to tennis. The father’s support has been key, since when Carlos Alcaraz senior was young he received a proposal to go live in Barcelona and enter the Sergi Bruguera Academy. Since they didn’t have the money, he had to give up the dream. So he moved heaven and earth to ensure that his son could compete, with the support of his wife, the Sevillian Veronica Garfia, who is in charge of bringing the money to Alcaraz. “I think of my mother and my grandfather, who could not come. I think of my family and everything they have done for me” he said in his speech after winning an Alcaraz that he had the detail to remember ” such a special day for New York, I want to extend my support to the entire city on a day like this,” referring to the anniversary of the 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers.
At the age of 14, Alcaraz would achieve the first point in an ATP tournament at home, in Murcia. Party that witnessed the ex-world number 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero. The former Ontinyent player, now retired, had opened an Academy in Villena and was looking for young talents. Someone told him about Alcaraz and “I saw him at a tournament we did at our Academy. He must have been 13 years old. He was very thin and chaotic in the game, but he had magic. I saw him again later and I knew that I wanted to work with him,” he recalls. At the age of 14, young Alcaraz began a life on the road, between school in Murcia and training in Villena. Ferrero, however, would not officially become his coach until he broke up with German Alexander Zverev four years ago. “It was a risky bet as I was going from coaching a top player to focusing on a teenager. It involved spending hours around taking him to play games for lost places in Brazil, dedicating myself to him alone” he admits the coach
And Ferrero has become the key figure to finally make Alcaraz the best player of the moment. The doctor Juanjo López, in an interview in Murcia, explained how the ex-player made it clear to the young man’s relatives that it was key to guarantee some things, in that training process: “He had to keep having a good time. And he had to to be able to rest, to do other things. Too much effort in different phases of growth can work against you.” His coach has accompanied him to lost tournaments, spending hours and hours with him, advising a young man who, according to Ferrero, “would have stood out before if it wasn’t for the pandemic”. Alcaraz, who was a poorly kept secret until recently, is now one of the most famous athletes on the planet. “This was a dream I had since I was a child, to win a tournament like this,” the Murcian said excitedly. A player who feels like he’s still having a good time when he plays. As I used to do in the pediment of El Palmar when I was a child.
