Alcaraz, Carlos (2003- )

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Tennis

      The Agony of Playing Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic at the French Open

      by

      Little-known players learned humbling lessons when they drew Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic in the first round of the French Open.Aleksandar Kovacevic did plenty of tossing and turning Sunday night before finally settling in for what he thought was about six hours of restless sleep.He had good reason to be nervous. Kovacevic, who is 24 years old and the world’s 114th-ranked player, had a noon tennis date in the first round of the French Open with Novak Djokovic, the winner of 22 Grand Slam singles titles.The only person with a more daunting assignment perhaps was Flavio Cobolli of Italy. Cobolli, who is 21 and ranked 159th, survived the qualifying tournament last week, only to be rewarded with an opening-round confrontation with Carlos Alcaraz.It didn’t go so well for either of the unknowns.Nine games and roughly 35 minutes into Cobolli’s match, an Alcaraz forehand sailed long and Cobolli let out a scream, swung his racket in celebration and let a smile spread across his face. He pumped his fist to the crowd as he walked to his chair. He had finally won a game against the best player in the world, who was playing like, well, the best player in the world.“I did the best I could,” Cobolli said.Alexsandar Kovacevic grew up idolizing Novak Djokovic, who defeated him in three sets on Monday.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesKovacevic, who lost to Djokovic, 6-3, 6-2, 7-6(1), had a pretty good idea of what that felt like, too, even though he lasted more than two hours on the court with a player he grew up idolizing.“There was some points, passing shots that he hits, and they’re just points where I feel like I had no chance sometimes,” Kovacevic said. “And those are definitely humbling.”It is a truism of tennis that the top players hate playing the first round of a Grand Slam. Anything but a cruise to victory is cause for concern. Also, there is always the possibility of epic failure in the form of a loss to someone few have heard of.Whatever discomfort Djokovic and Alcaraz may have felt walking onto the courts at Roland Garros on Monday, they mostly managed it with ease, especially Alcaraz. He made an early contribution to the tournament highlight reel, curling a backhand around the net post for a winner early in the second set. Djokovic had more of a workout, and even lost his serve late in his match after getting windblown clay in his eyes.It helped that the stars drew opponents with three digits in their rankings whose recent experience didn’t have much in common with their own. Kovacevic had a particularly winding journey to his date on the French Open’s center court with Djokovic.His father, Milan, immigrated to America from Serbia to pursue a doctorate in computer science from U.C.L.A. His mother is from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kovacevic grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, about 500 yards from the green clay of the Central Park tennis complex.In ninth grade, he still wasn’t good enough to play singles for Beacon High School, a public school in Midtown, even though he was spending afternoons training at the John McEnroe Tennis Academy on Randall’s Island.Things started to click after he left Beacon to train in Florida while taking classes at home. At a tournament one summer, he played a top junior who was planning to attend the University of Illinois. His opponent told him he should join him at the school, so he did, even though he didn’t have much interest in college. By the time he finished five years later, he was ranked in the low 400s and figured he would give pro tennis a shot.Since then he has mostly been playing in the tennis hinterlands, though he did win a match in the main draw of the prestigious Miami Open in March.“It has not been the most glorious over the last couple of years,” he said.“I’m standing in Chatrier in front of a packed crowd, playing the best player to ever pick up a racket,” Kovacevic said of Djokovic. “It’s something that you got to take in for a second, but also push away and try to focus and play.”Jean-Francois Badias/Associated PressOn Monday, Kovacevic made his Grand Slam debut against Djokovic on the main court at Roland Garros, Philippe Chatrier, though it wasn’t his first time meeting Djokovic.That happened at the U.S. Open when he was 6 and his Balkan-proud parents brought him to watch the 18-year-old Djokovic win an early-round match, long before Djokovic was the player he would become. And two years ago he warmed up Djokovic at the U.S. Open after coming within a point of qualifying to play.He has the pictures to prove it, and he has tried to incorporate elements of Djokovic’s game into his own. His squat as he waits for an opponent’s serve — knees wide, chest up, racket out front — has plenty of Djokovic in it, even if the rest of his game isn’t quite there yet.“Where I am in my career, like it shouldn’t be so crazy to me that I’m playing some of these guys,” he said. “But, you know, the little kid in me, I’m standing in Chatrier in front of a packed crowd, playing the best player to ever pick up a racket. It’s something that you got to take in for a second, but also push away and try to focus and play.”The way Alcaraz has started his career, he may eventually have something to say about who is the best player to pick up a racket. Everyone in tennis knows this, including Cobolli, who has also spent most of his brief career in the sport’s version of the minor leagues.He was in an elevator, still feeling good about qualifying for his first main draw Grand Slam match, when he looked at his phone and saw that his opponent was Alcaraz. He said he closed his eyes, ran his hand through his hair, and thought, “Oh no.”Roughly, three-quarters of an hour into the match, it was going as he dreaded it might. Alcaraz couldn’t miss and later said he felt “invincible,” like he would never lose a game. Cobolli barely had time to breathe between shots.The scoreboard said 6-0, 2-0. “He was playing incredible,” Cobolli said.Cobolli lasted just under two hours against Alcaraz.Anne-Christine Poujoulat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn the bright side, there is nothing the French crowd loves more — other than a French player — than rallying behind a player who is getting blitzed. And by the time Cobolli got his legs under him, knotting the third set at 5-5, the crowd of nearly 10,000 on the Suzanne Lenglen court was chanting his name. It was like he was one of their own, especially after he saved three match points and broke Alcaraz’s serve to draw even in the set.“I felt important on the court,” Cobolli said.The final score was 6-0, 6-2, 7-5, the elapsed time 1 hour, 57 minutes.Now that Cobolli has seen up close what the best looks like, he said he understands better what he must do to compete — hit the weight room, he said with a grin as he pushed in at his chest with his hand. And get better at tennis.Hope springs eternal for him as it does for so many of the Kovacevics and Cobollis in the game. Just over two years ago, Alcaraz’s ranking had three digits, too. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Tennis

      Before Carlos Alcaraz Was Great, He Was Good Enough to Be Lucky

      by

      Carlos Alcaraz is so good, so young, and wins so often that his success has seemed predetermined.Of course someone that fast, with hands as soft as an artisan’s and a physique that lands him right in the not-too-tall and not-too-short Goldilocks zone of the modern tennis greats, would become the youngest world No. 1 during the 50-year history of the ATP rankings. He has good genes, too. His father was a nationally ranked professional in Spain as a teenager.So this was preordained for Alcaraz, the 20-year-old champion who comes to Paris this week as the prohibitive favorite to win the French Open, wasn’t it?Maybe not.As happens so often in sports, and especially in tennis, where early exposure and training are essential, there was an element of luck that helped create the sport’s heir apparent to the troika of Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic that has ruled the men’s game for the better part of the last two decades.That luck ultimately took the form of a local candy company’s logo, which adorned the shirts Alcaraz wore during his matches from the time he was 10 years old. It was all thanks to happenstance encounters with Alfonso López Rueda, the tennis-playing president of Postres Reina, a Spanish dessert and candy concern known for its puddings and yogurts. López Rueda’s interest in Alcaraz and the support that allowed him to travel Europe and begin competing against older boys in unfamiliar settings may be an explanation for the way Alcaraz, from the beginning of his short career, has almost always displayed a kind of joyous serenity, even as the stage grew bigger and the spotlight hotter.Carlos Alcaraz has worn the Postres Reina logo on his shirt during matches since before he was 10 years old.Manuel Romano/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesSupport from the candy company allowed Alcaraz to travel Europe to tournaments.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“Some personalities are just adept at that, some have to learn,” said Paul Annacone, who has coached the great players Federer and Pete Sampras, among others. “He just really seems to enjoy the environment — win, lose, whatever — seems to embrace it.”The greatest fortune an aspiring tennis player can have, it seems, is to have been born to parents who played the game at the highest level. The pro ranks, especially on the men’s side, are lousy with nepo babies. Casper Ruud, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Sebastian Korda, Taylor Fritz and Ben Shelton are all the offspring of former professionals. All of them had a racket in their hands at an early age and nearly unlimited access to someone who knew best what to do with it.For everyone else, some kismet is key.The skills professional tennis requires are so specialized, and the long and expensive process of honing them has to start at such a young age. But the player development system in most countries is fractured and happenstance at best, with any school-based programs being mostly limited. Either a family consciously decides to expose a young child to tennis, or the child does not play, at least not seriously.So it’s hardly a surprise that so many of the creation stories in professional tennis seem to involve a sliding-doors moment.Frances Tiafoe probably does not end up as a Grand Slam semifinalist if his father, an immigrant from Sierra Leone, becomes a maintenance man in an office park instead of at a local tennis club.Novak Djokovic had the good fortune of meeting Jelena Gencic, one of the top coaches in Serbia, when he was 6 years old and she was giving a tennis clinic on the courts near his parents’ restaurant in Kopaonik, in the Serbian mountains near Montenegro.Arthur Ashe was traveling in Cameroon in 1971 when he spotted an 11-year-old schoolboy with raw talent to burn. He put in a call to his friend Philippe Chatrier at France’s tennis federation and told him he best come have a look. That boy was Yannick Noah, the last Frenchman to win the French Open.As with the others, Alcaraz’s preternatural gifts and skills played the biggest role in his good fortune. When he got the chance to impress, he did, but first luck had to deliver an opportunity.The decision by Alcaraz’s grandfather to put red clay courts at a club in El Palmar proved fortuitous for his grandson.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesThe story of that opportunity begins with Alcaraz’s grandfather’s decision decades ago to develop tennis courts and a swimming pool at a hunting club in El Palmar, a suburb of the city of Murcia. It would have been cheaper to put in all hardcourts, but the Spanish love the red clay. So Grandpa Alcaraz (another Carlos) made sure to include those courts with the development.Now flash forward to a dozen years ago. López Rueda is the tennis-mad chief executive of Postres Reina, which is based in Caravaca de la Cruz. But López Rueda doesn’t just like tennis; he likes to play tennis on red clay. He lives in the same region as the Alcaraz clan, and the best and most accessible clay courts for him are at a club in El Palmar, so he plays there, said Jose Lag, a longtime Postres Reina executive and an Alcaraz family friend, who spoke on behalf of his boss, López Rueda.At the club he became friendly with Alcaraz’s father and played as the doubles partner of his uncle. Also, López Rueda’s son, who is three years older than Alcaraz, had the same coach, Kiko Navarro, who could not stop raving about the talents of Carlito. One day López Rueda agreed to watch the boy play and it was unlike anything he had ever seen. Carlito had everything, but his family’s resources were limited. His father was a tennis coach and administrator at the club, and his mother was busy raising the boy and his younger siblings.López Rueda agreed to loan the family 2,000 euros to travel to a tournament, but then he started to think bigger and decided to get his company involved in supporting this local boy who was already capable of beating taller, stronger and older competition.Postres Reina had long supported local basketball and soccer teams, but tennis was López Rueda’s favorite sport and the company had never sponsored an individual athlete. Alcaraz became the first, wearing the company logo on his shirts.The company’s support, which lasted through Alcaraz’s early teenage years, allowed him to continue to access to the best coaching in his region and to travel throughout Europe to play in the most competitive tournaments.“It was done not as a marketing interest,” Lag said. “It was only to help him. We never thought he would be No. 1.”Alcaraz with López Rueda. Postres Reina had never sponsored an individual athlete before Alcaraz.Courtesy of Jose LagSeeing Alcaraz’s success, IMG, the sports and entertainment conglomerate, signed him at age 13, providing even more access, notably to his current coach, the former world No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero.There is a fair chance that Alcaraz would have eventually become a top player had López Rueda never seen him. Spain’s tennis federation, which has one of the world’s best talent development pipelines, probably would have caught wind of him before too long.Max Eisenbud, the director of tennis at IMG, said in any tennis success story the most important ingredient is a solid family willing to take a long-term view toward a child’s success.“That is the secret recipe,” Eisenbud said during a recent interview, but he acknowledged that financial assistance for a family that needs it can certainly help.When a player develops as quickly as Alcaraz, rising from outside the top 100 in May 2021 to No. 1 16 months later, each detail of his development can be credited with having a role in the outcome.Alcaraz’s peers have watched in awe as he has raised his level of play with each tournament, in an era when the constant spotlight tortures so many of them. During Alcaraz’s first months challenging the top rungs of the tour, Alexander Zverev marveled at his ability to play “simply for the joy.”Alcaraz said that no matter what people saw, getting used to the ever more raucous and pressure-filled environments took some time but he learned fast. A drubbing by Nadal in Madrid two years ago helped but his mind-set never changed.“I always wanted to play in the great stadiums,” he said. And it has seemed like he really did.Alcaraz during his loss in the round of 32 at the Italian Open. He had won three of his previous four tournaments before an early exit in Rome.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersAlcaraz won the 2022 U.S. Open final to claim his first major singles title and earn the No. 1 ranking.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesMostly tennis is one big hoot to Alcaraz, from his first win at a Grand Slam tournament on a back court at the Australian Open in February 2021, to his back-to-back victories over Nadal and Djokovic at the Madrid Open in 2022, to his semifinal showdown against Tiafoe at the U.S. Open last September in front of 23,000 fans and with Michelle Obama sitting in the front row, to his triumph in the finals two days later.How could that be? Allen Fox, a Division I champion and a 1965 Wimbledon quarterfinalist who later became one of the game’s leading sports psychologists, used the term that professionals use when there is no rational explanation. He described Alcaraz as both a “genius” and a “genetic freak.”“The only way he loses is when he is missing,” Fox said. “He just plays his same high-risk game, and never takes his foot off the accelerator.” More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Tennis

      Injured Rafael Nadal Withdraws From The French Open

      by

      Nadal, the Spanish star, has battled a core muscle injury since January. He said that next season “probably is going to be my last year in the professional tour.”Rafael Nadal, the 14-time French Open men’s singles champion, will not compete in this year’s edition of the event that has defined his career because of an injury that has sidelined him for months.Nadal, who has competed in Paris every year since 2005 and has an astonishing record of 112-3 at Roland Garros, made the announcement in a news conference Thursday at his tennis academy on the Spanish island of Majorca.Nadal said he would further extend his break from the game to try to get healthy and then attempt to play next season, which he said “probably is going to be my last year in the professional tour.”“That’s my idea,” he said. “Even that, I can’t say that 100 percent it’s going to be like this because you never know what is going to happen, but my idea and motivation is to try to enjoy and to try to say goodbye to all the tournaments that have been important to me in my tennis career.”His withdrawal from the French Open, which is scheduled to begin on May 28, was not a surprise. He has not played since suffering an injury to his lower abdomen and right leg at the Australian Open in January. But the reality of the announcement, and his approaching absence from the red clay he has ruled for so long, jolted the tennis world.“I was working as much as possible every single day for the last four months and they have been very difficult months because we were not able to find the solution to the problem I had in Australia,” Nadal said. “Today I am still in the position where I am not able to feel myself ready to compete at the standards I need to be to play at Roland Garros.”Nadal won last year’s French Open to claim his 22nd Grand Slam singles title, and he has repeatedly called the tournament, the year’s second major, the most important of his career. His absence will create a massive void that the statue of him just steps away from the main stadium ensures will be a theme throughout the event.Nadal made it clear that he did not want to play the tournament with no realistic chance of being truly competitive.“I am not a guy who is going to be at Roland Garros and just try to be there and put myself in a position I don’t like to be in,” he said.“My idea and motivation is to try to enjoy and to try to say goodbye to all the tournaments that have been important to me in my tennis career,” Nadal said on Thursday.Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNadal said that after pushing himself through pain to try to get ready for the French Open, he will now take an extended break from practice in an attempt to get healthy.“I don’t know when I will be able to come back to the practice court, but I will stop for a while,” he said. “Maybe two months. Maybe one month and a half. Maybe three months. Maybe four months. I don’t know. I’m not the guy who likes to predict the future but I am just following my personal feelings and just following what I really believe is the right thing to do for my body and for my personal happiness.”For weeks, as the pro tennis tour has meandered through the European clay season, which he has dominated throughout his career, Nadal’s health and his halting rehabilitation process have been some of the game’s main plot points. The conversation has gotten louder each week his withdrawals — from tournaments in Monte Carlo, then Barcelona, then Madrid — mounted.His most expansive comments before Thursday came in a video posted on social media last month in which he explained that his ongoing battle to recover from the tear in his psoas muscle in his lower abdomen and upper right leg had not gone as planned. Nadal suffered the injury in January during the second round of the Australian Open, the year’s first major tournament, where he was attempting to defend his title.In the days following Nadal’s injury in Australia, his team stated that it expected him to miss six to eight weeks, a timetable that would have allowed Nadal to return in time for the spring clay court season in Europe.The announcement at the beginning of this month that Nadal would not play in Rome, where he has won a record 10 times, sounded major alarm bells. The conditions there are closest to those at the French Open. Over the weekend, the organizer of a challenger event on red clay in France next week said Nadal had not sought entry into that tournament. That meant his opening match at Roland Garros would have to be his first real competition in more than four months.Nadal had said last month that he planned to seek additional treatment for the injury but did not specify what that treatment entailed and said he had no idea when he would be able to compete again. Throughout a record-setting but injury-plagued career, Nadal has mainly relied on a group of medical specialists in his native Spain, including Dr. Angel Ruiz Cotorro.It is not unheard-of for Nadal to enter a Grand Slam tournament without having played a tuneup on the corresponding surface. Nadal entered Wimbledon last year without having played a competitive match on grass since the middle of 2019. He made the semifinals but had to withdraw because of an abdominal injury.The psoas muscle injury is the latest in a string of ailments over the past 18 months — the flare-up of a chronic foot injury, a cracked rib and a pulled abdominal muscle — that have caused Nadal, who turns 37 on June 3, to miss many of the tournaments that are usually on his schedule. It comes at a time in his career when retirement has begun to feel less conceptual and more like a looming reality with each passing week.Nadal won his 14th French Open men’s singles title in 2022.James Hill for The New York TimesMaking matters worse, tennis punishes inactivity in a way that can make coming back from long layoffs especially difficult. If Nadal misses the entire clay court season, he will experience a calamitous drop in the world rankings unlike anything he has been through during the past two decades.In March, Nadal dropped out of the top 10 for the first time in 18 years. By missing the French Open, he is likely to drop out of the top 100 for the first time since 2003. While he will still be able to gain entry into any tournament by requesting a wild card, depending on how long he is sidelined and whether his ranking will qualify for protection, he may not be seeded and is likely to face top players far earlier than he usually would.That will present a special challenge for Nadal, who has often talked about needing to play himself into form and finding his rhythm with a series of wins against lesser competition. That opportunity will not be available without a higher ranking, and winning matches is the only way to achieve a higher ranking. Andy Murray of Britain, who turned 36 on May 15, is a two-time Wimbledon champion who climbed to No. 1 in 2016 and has been battling this dynamic since his return from major hip surgery four years ago.Nadal’s absence figures to leave the door wide open for Carlos Alcaraz, the Spanish sensation who turned 20 earlier this month and last year became the youngest man ever to achieve the world’s top ranking after winning the U.S. Open; or Novak Djokovic, who is tied with Nadal with 22 Grand Slam singles titles. Djokovic has had his own injury problems during the clay court season, though he has appeared to be in solid form this week in Rome at the Italian Open.When he rejoined the tour in April, he aggravated an elbow injury in Monte Carlo and Barcelona. Then he withdrew from Madrid so he could rest for Rome, where he has won six times, and Roland Garros, where he has won twice, most recently in 2021.Djokovic, the world No. 1, missed two important hard court tournaments in the United States in March because he could not gain entry into the country without being vaccinated against Covid-19. The Biden administration has ended that requirement, meaning Djokovic will be able to play in the U.S. Open. More

    • 188 Shares99 Views

      in Tennis

      The Same Work but a Lot Less Pay for Women. Welcome to Tennis in 2023.

      by

      At the Italian Open, women will compete for less than half as much money as the men. Organizers say they intend to fix that, but not for two years.The best tennis players in the world descend this week on Rome, where men and women will play in the same best-of-three-sets format, on the same courts and in the same tournament, which sells one same-price ticket for both men’s matches and women’s matches.There is one massive difference between the two competitions, however: Men will compete for $8.5 million while the women will compete for $3.9 million.The huge pay discrepancy comes after two months of tennis that included three similarly significant tournaments in California, Florida and Madrid that featured men and women competing for the same amount of prize money. Men and women also get paid the same at the four Grand Slam tournaments, where men play best-of-five sets and the women play best of three.But not in Rome at the Italian Open. And not yet in the Cincinnati suburbs at the Western & Southern Open. Or in Canada, at the National Bank Open, where the men and women alternate between Toronto and Montreal each year.Angelo Binaghi, the chief executive of Italy’s tennis federation, announced recently that the Italian Open was committed to achieving pay equity by 2025 “to align itself with other major events on the circuit,” even though an expanded format will bring in additional money this year. For the next two editions of the tournament, women will have to do the same work for a lot less pay, which makes them feel, well, not great.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” said Paula Badosa, a 25-year-old from Spain who is among the leaders of a nascent player organization, the Professional Tennis Players Association. “They don’t inform us. They say this is what you get and you have to play.”A spokesman for the Italian federation did not make Binaghi available for an interview.“It’s really frustrating,” Ons Jabeur, who made two Grand Slam finals last year and is seeded fourth in Rome, said during an interview Tuesday. “It’s time for change. It’s time for the tournament to do better.”Steve Simon, the chairman and chief executive of the WTA Tour, which organizes the women’s circuit on behalf of the tournament owners and players, said the disparate prize money was a reflection of a market that values men’s sports more highly than women’s, especially for sponsorships and media rights. He said the organization was working toward a solution that would strive to achieve pay equity at all of tennis’ biggest events in the coming years.“There is still a long way to go but we are seeing progress,” Simon said in an interview Monday.The explanations — and blame — for women in tennis continuing to be so shortchanged include ingrained chauvinism, bad agreements with tournament owners and the eat-what-you-kill nature of the sports business, where owners, officials and organizers often blame the athletes (rather than their incompetence) for not generating enough revenue. Then they use it as an excuse not to invest in the sport and keep athlete pay and prize money low.In tennis, women often receive second billing in mixed tournaments — less-desirable schedules on smaller courts, sometimes even lesser hotels. In Madrid last week, the participants in the women’s doubles final did not get a chance to speak during the awards ceremony. The men did.Organizers often tell the women they lack the star power of the men. At the French Open last year, Amélie Mauresmo, the tournament director and a former world No. 1 in singles, scheduled just one women’s match in the featured nighttime slot, compared to nine men’s matches, then explained that the men’s game had “more attraction” and appeal than the women’s game. She later apologized, but when second-billing can make it harder for women to achieve stardom, this self-fulfilling prophecy can lead to lower pay.In March, Denis Shapovalov of Canada, currently ranked 27th, published an essay in The Players’ Tribune criticizing the sport’s leaders for not being more unified.“I think some people might think of gender equality as mere political correctness,” wrote Shapovalov, whose mother has coached him and whose girlfriend, Mirjam Bjorklund of Sweden, plays on the women’s tour. “Deep down they don’t feel that women deserve as much.”The WTA has committed some unforced errors. At the most important mixed tournaments, attendance is mandatory for women and men. The WTA only requires participation at tournaments in Indian Wells, Calif.; Miami Gardens, Fla.; Madrid and Beijing, but not in Rome, Canada or Ohio, even though those events rank just behind the Grand Slams in importance. Also, the WTA awards slightly fewer ranking points than the men’s tour does in Rome, Canada and Ohio, where the women’s champion receives 900 points compared with 1,000 for the men.These minor differences have given tournament officials an excuse for paying women so much less, even though nearly all of the top women play the big optional events, unless they are injured. Organizers, however, say that without mandatory participation they can’t market the tournament as effectively, so local sponsors and media companies will not pay as much.“It’s time for change. It’s time for the tournament to do better,” said Ons Jabeur, who is seeded fourth in Rome.Marijan Murat/DPA, via Associated PressMarc-Antoine Farly, a spokesman for Tennis Canada, cited that difference when asked recently why the National Bank Open offered men $5.9 million last year, compared with $2.53 million for the women. Despite that difference, Farly said, “Gender equity is very important for our organization.” He pointed to Tennis Canada’s recently released plan to seek gender equity at all levels during the next five years and to offer equal prize money at the National Bank Open by 2027. “Over the next few years, Tennis Canada fully intends to be a leading voice with the WTA on a development plan to close the WTA/ATP prize money gap.”Like most aspects of the tennis business, the formula for prize money requires a somewhat complicated explanation. Tournament owners guarantee a portion of revenues from tickets, domestic media rights and sponsorship sales for prize money. The tours contribute a portion using money from their own media rights and sponsorship deals as well as the fees the tournament owners pay the tours to acquire the licenses for the events. Simon said the WTA brings in substantially less money than the men’s circuit, the ATP Tour, which means it has substantially less money to contribute to prize money.That said, if equal prize money is important to tournament owners, they can choose to pay it. That is what the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, owned by the computer technology billionaire Larry Ellison, has agreed to do for more than a decade under his contract with the WTA.“The tournament views the event as a single product,” said Matt Van Tuinen, a spokesman for the tournament. “Paying them equally is the right thing to do.”Same goes for IMG, the sports and entertainment conglomerate that owns both the Miami Open and the Madrid Open. Both pay equally.In addition to Italy’s and Canada’s tennis federations, the United States Tennis Association, which has long bragged about its leadership in pay equity, did not award equal prize money at the Western & Southern Open, the main tuneup for the U.S. Open. Last year, men competed in Mason, Ohio, for $6.28 million. Women competed for $2.53 million. The U.S. Open became the first of the Grand Slam tournaments to offer equal prize money, in 1973, and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the event in grand fashion this summer. The U.S.T.A. ran the Cincinnati-area tournament for more than a decade.Chris Widmaier, a spokesman for the organization, said the prize money was “dictated by the commensurate level of the competition as determined by each Tour.”In other words, since the Western & Southern was not a mandatory WTA event and the women competed for 10 percent less rankings points, paying them roughly 40 cents for each dollar the men received was justified.The U.S.T.A. last summer announced it was selling the tournament to Ben Navarro, the South Carolina financier and tennis enthusiast. Through a spokesman, he declined to be interviewed for this article.Help may be on the way.Earlier this year, CVC Capital Partners, the private equity firm, bought 20 percent of a WTA commercial subsidiary for $150 million. The investment, which will be used to enhance sales and marketing efforts, combined with a strategic plan being finalized that would eliminate the discrepancies between the men’s and women’s competitions at the mixed events, is supposed to help the WTA grow its revenues. That will allow the tour to contribute more to prize money and hopefully get tournament organizers to commit to pay equity in the coming years.The plan requires some patience, which is running thin among the players.“I don’t see why we have to wait,” Jabeur said. More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Tennis

      After Indian Wells and Miami, Intrigue Awaits at the Top of Tennis

      by

      Daniil Medvedev, Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Elena Rybakina had a rousing month in the United States. With Europe, red clay and the return of the biggest stars on the horizon, this could get very interesting.MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — It doesn’t take an expert in code cracking to figure out the pattern that has emerged in professional tennis in the past month as the tours descended on the United States for the winter-spring swing in California and Florida.Over four weeks, and two of the most important tournaments other than the Grand Slam events, a small group at the top of the sport became a little more crowded, especially with some members injured (Iga Swiatek, Rafael Nadal) or sidelined because the United States still prohibits foreigners not vaccinated against Covid-19 from entering (Novak Djokovic).Carlos Alcaraz, the 19-year-old Spanish marvel fast becoming the biggest draw in the sport, was already in the group. But make room once more for Daniil Medvedev. A magically idiosyncratic Russian who dropped out of the top tier last year, Medvedev won the Miami Open for the first time on Sunday, beating Jannik Sinner, 7-5, 6-3, after making the final at Indian Wells two weeks ago.Elena Rybakina is now officially there, too. A fluid and powerful Kazakh, she nearly pulled off the so-called Sunshine Double, losing to the Czech veteran Petra Kvitova in the Miami final on Saturday after winning at Indian Wells.Then there is Sinner, the smooth Italian who lost to Medvedev on Sunday and made the semis in Indian Wells and who solidified his position as the most reliable contemporary rival for an otherwise nearly unstoppable Alcaraz. Sinner matched Alcaraz bang for bang and beat him in their semifinal match Friday night to knot their head-to-head record at 3-3. Rybakina, by the way, has managed the same trick with Swiatek, becoming her Kryptonite in a way no one else has lately.“Best start of the season I have ever had,” said Medvedev, who has won 24 of his last 25 matches and four of his last five tournaments since losing in the third round of the Australian Open in January.Every March and April at Indian Wells and Miami, trophies and big checks are handed out, but this time the top of the sport’s tectonic plates shifted just enough to create new intrigue as tennis moves to Europe for the clay-court season and then onto the grass.Nadal, the so-called King of Clay, the winner of 14 French Open titles, posted on Instagram a picture of himself stretching for a shot in practice last week, an unsubtle hint that he plans to be ready. The prognosis is good for Swiatek, who was undefeated on clay last spring. Djokovic has endured forced layoffs because he is unvaccinated before and has come back stronger. No one doubts he will not do the same this time.Carlos Alcaraz, who won the men’s singles title at Indian Wells last month, met his match against Jannick Sinner in the semifinal at the Miami Open.Al Bello/Getty ImagesThose three may be poised to strike, but they also know the ever-evolving challenges that await them. Even though he exited a round short of the final here in Florida, Alcaraz, with his jaw-dropping display of shotmaking, left behind another slew of victims, solidifying his stature as the most disruptively powerful force in the game.Taylor Fritz, the top American, relished the chance to face Alcaraz for the first time in the quarterfinals here on Thursday. He came away from the straight-sets beating wondering what had hit him. Fritz came out pounding 110-miles-per-hour second serves that the Spaniard turned into clean winners. Fritz crushed backhands across the court that Alcaraz banged back with impossible backhands down the line. He said Alcaraz inflicted a level of suffocation he had not experienced the first time he played Djokovic, Nadal or Roger Federer.“I definitely felt like I had more breathing room against those guys than in this match,” Fritz said.Medvedev, safe from Alcaraz on the other side of the draw, watched on television — Medvedev watches a lot of tennis on television when he remains alive in a tournament — and saw that Alcaraz was hitting forehands at blazing speed. He shook his head.“People are like, Why cannot other people play against Carlos?” Medvedev said. “Well, I cannot hit 110-miles forehand. Yeah, that’s an advantage.”But Medvedev, who lost to Alcaraz in the men’s singles final at Indian Wells and is almost as good a pundit as he is a player, offered some counterintuitive analysis. Conventional wisdom would suggest that trying to outhit Alcaraz would be a fool’s errand, since that is how Alcaraz prefers to play.Medvedev though, said that is most likely why Sinner has been more successful than anyone else against Alcaraz. Alcaraz is more consistent, and possesses crisp volleys, the most deceptive drop shots and relentless defense. But, Medvedev said: “Jannik can hit the ball very strong. I think that’s where they have this kind of Ping-Pong tennis. That’s where he can bring him trouble.”And then Sinner did, coming back from a set down against Alcaraz, running him into leg cramps in yet another of their highlight reel displays.“You have to go for shots where usually you don’t go for it” against Alcaraz, Sinner said.Medvedev, who has now won all of their matches, presented a different challenge for Sinner, who said he woke up feeling under the weather. Medvedev is a human backboard, whose flat power did not pop into Sinner’s strike zone the way Alcaraz’s powerful topspin did on this slick hardcourt that was a near-perfect fit for Medvedev’s game.Early on, Medvedev lulled Sinner into long rallies. Sinner shifted to a more aggressive tack, which helped. But feeling less than 100 percent and with a three-hour battle with Alcaraz still in his legs, he wilted in the 86-degree heat, unable to find the next gear he needed to win his first Masters 1000 title.“I’m getting closer and closer,” Sinner said of his lopsided record against Medvedev. “Every player has a player or two they are not comfortable with.”Another pattern worth noting: It has been said that an unkempt Medvedev is the best Medvedev. When he has showed up to play clean-shaven with his hair nearly groomed, as though he had just stepped out of a fashion shoot for Lacoste, his game has been flat. But when he takes the court with a scraggly beard, with his hair flying in four directions and his shirt a size or two too big, his inner artist and assassin seem to become fully realized.No surprise then, that Medvedev has been properly unkempt for the past month. He has been working with a new mental coach as well, though he won’t reveal the name, after a year without one that did not go well.“I always try to do my best, always try to work hard,” Medvedev said. “You never know when it is going to pay.”“Happy with the run and super proud of myself,” Elena Rybakina said after losing the women’s singles final at the Miami Open to Petra Kvitova.Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports via Reuters ConEven after losing in Saturday’s final to snap a 13-match winning streak, Rybakina will head into the clay-court season as a force who grows more fearsome every month. She won her first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon last year, but her ranking remained artificially low because after Wimbledon prohibited Russians and Belarusians from competing, the tours withheld rankings points for the event. She spent all summer and fall trying to make up for that, but arrived in Australia rested. She cruised into the final, where she lost to Aryna Sabalenka in three tight sets.She has barely let up since, using her powerful serve and rolling backhand to overwhelm her opponents. She finally ran out of gas on Saturday after a mesmerizing first-set tiebreaker. Kvitova, who won her ninth Masters 1000 title, saved six set points before winning, 7-6 (14), 6-2.“Happy with the run and super proud of myself,” Rybakina said when it was over.And what to make of Kvitova? She is 33 and a two-time Wimbledon champion who just won her first Masters 1000 title since 2018, to say nothing of the 2016 attack in her home that left her dominant left hand bloodied and with torn ligaments. Not even Kvitova could answer that as she sat next to the glass trophy early Saturday evening.“I have no idea what this will do,” she said. “The clay is waiting and then it’s grass. The tennis world is just very fast, and I can’t really stand there and be watching this trophy.”Neither can Medvedev nor any of the others who excelled in the last month. Novak and Rafa and Iga await. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Tennis

      Practical but Not Pretty. That’s Pro Tennis at Miami’s N.F.L. Stadium.

      by

      Five years ago, the Miami Open had to abandon Crandon Park on Key Biscayne for Hard Rock Stadium and its parking lot. It remains a work in progress.MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — No one really wanted to move the Miami Open 18 miles north from the idyll setting of Key Biscayne to a suburban N.F.L. stadium and its parking lot.Not tournament organizers, or players, or county officials, or longtime fans. They so loved the Key Biscayne location that they tolerated the traffic from downtown Miami across the Rickenbacker Causeway and confines so cramped at Crandon Park that players sometimes stretched and warmed up on the stadium’s concourse.Trekking across the crystal waters of Biscayne Bay made a day at those old-school grounds feel like a mini vacation to tennis Shangri-La, with the coastal breezes through the coconut palms and dense vegetation easing the South Florida humidity. For many, a tennis tournament, even one as important as the Miami Open, is less a sporting event than a novel way to experience the best of what a region has to offer, whether it is the seascapes beyond Monte Carlo Country Club, or the desert mountain views of Indian Wells, Calif.Andy Murray of Great Britain signing autographs for fans after defeating Robert Kendrick during the 2007 Sony Ericsson Open in Key Biscayne.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesBianca Andreescu of Canada signed autographs and posed for photos with fans after defeating the United States’s Sofia Kenin at Miami Gardens on Sunday.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesBut Crandon Park badly needed an upgrade. And while I.M.G., the sports and entertainment conglomerate that owns the tournament, was willing to spend some $50 million to renovate the main stadium, which seated roughly 13,000 spectators, and construct three new permanent stadiums with more than 10,000 seats combined, local opposition arose in the form of Bruce Matheson.Matheson’s family had donated the land for Crandon Park to Dade County in 1940 under terms that did not include private enterprise. A mediated settlement in 1992 allowed for one stadium, but he drew the line at three more, returned to court and won, preventing any expansion.With few options in South Florida, I.M.G. cut a deal with Stephen Ross, the owner of the Dolphins. He agreed to wedge a temporary tennis arena in the corner of Hard Rock Stadium each March and build a permanent grandstand, along with more than two dozen other courts, in his parking lot.Tatiana Golovin of France returning a shot to Elena Bovina of Russia during the NASDAQ-100 Open in 2005 in Key Biscayne.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesSpectators crowded the fence in hopes of getting an autograph while watching competitors practice during the Miami Open in Miami Gardens on Saturday.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesIt was the polar opposite of Crandon Park charm, with its bandbox stadium that felt like a tennis version of a beloved nightclub. Roger Federer was not happy.“Right now it doesn’t feel great to move away from Key Biscayne to be honest,” he said during the tournament’s final year at the beach in 2018.Five years later, Stefanos Tsitsipas, the Greek star, is among those still pining for the old neighborhood and adjusting to the new setup — a stadium-within-a-stadium for the main court, a tennis complex MacGyvered into a car park. There can be a “don’t look up” quality to it all, lest the emptiness of the football stadium or the construction for a coming F1 race come into view.“It’s one of the very few tournaments of the year that I would say is soulless,” Tsitsipas said after he lost to Karen Khachanov of Russia in the round of 16. “It has zero vibe, zero energy.”Tsitsipas, who has never made it past the quarterfinals here, said he loves Miami as a tennis destination but that he believes that tennis tournaments should take place in venues where players and fans can connect with the history of the sport. “I bet any player would still choose to be on Key Biscayne,” he said.The United States’s Coco Gauff prepared to serve while playing Russia’s Anastasia Potapova in Hard Rock Stadium on Saturday.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesFans watched as Novak Djokovic of Serbia played Andy Murray of Great Britain during the men’s final of the Sony Ericsson Open in 2009.Al Bello/Getty ImagesNot everyone. Carlos Alcaraz, the world No. 1 and defending champion, is a major fan of the new location.“A tennis court is always the same size,” Alcaraz said after beating Tommy Paul in straight sets on Tuesday. “I feel great here.”The expanded grounds and easier access to residents north and west of Miami allowed attendance to grow to a record 388,734 in 2019, 62,603 more than the Key Biscayne record. The tournament is likely to break that record this year. Joshua Ripple, I.M.G.’s senior vice president for tennis events, said the tournament is financially far more successful at the new site and can give players a workplace filled with amenities.“It used to be more about where you were going, how cool is the town, and where can me and my friends go out to eat,” he said. Now, he said, it’s about lots of practice courts, plenty of balls, good food on site, a big gym and decent transportation.Spectators walking and relaxing on the campus at the Miami Open on Saturday.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesThe general outdoor dining near the entrance of the Crandon Park Tennis Center before the Ericsson Open in 2000.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesAt Hard Rock, I.M.G. can sell 50 lush corporate suites instead of 25 at Key Biscayne, and the 75-acre footprint, compared with 32 acres in Crandon Park, has allowed for 100,000 square feet of pop-up retail and festival space. Mark Shapiro, the president of I.M.G.’s parent company, Endeavor Co., called it “a day party” minus the pool.James Blake, the former pro who has been the tournament’s director since 2018, said he now has more opportunities to say yes to player requests. On-site ice baths. Private massage rooms. Private suites for the top eight players and defending champions. A sprawling recovery room. Shaded seating for players and their entourages on the football field, plus corn hole and spike ball. Even shower heads high enough to accommodate N.F.L. linemen — and tall tennis players like Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Zverev.It beats filling buckets from the hotel ice machine to fill up the tub in the room long after a match. Or a player dining area without enough seats.The campus of the Miami Open at Key Biscayne in 2018.Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesSpectators taking a break from the sun in the shade during the Miami Open at Hard Rock Stadium.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times“There is room to grow here,” Blake said. “It felt like if you put one more person at Crandon Park, it was going to be Armageddon.”And yet, Crandon Park still has its pull.Late Wednesday morning, Jorge Fernandez, the father of the U.S. Open finalist Leylah Fernandez, was loading up a car after a practice session with his other daughter, Bianca, who is also trying to make it as a pro, on their favorite courts at Crandon Park, a world away from the action at Hard Rock Stadium.“No comparison,” he said, when asked about the old and the new tournament sites. “You got the beach, you got the golf course, you’re close to downtown.”Inside the old Crandon Park stadium, where Federer and Rafael Nadal played their first match in 2004 (Rafa won) two middle-aged locals were having a game. Federer and Nadal they were not — and that didn’t matter one bit.Sloane Stephens of the United States on Crandon Park Beach with the Miami Open trophy in 2018, the last year the event was held in Key Biscayne.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesThe Stadium Court at Crandon Park Tennis Center in Key Biscayne this year.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Tennis

      Carlos Alcaraz Takes World No. 1 Ranking Into The Miami Open

      by

      Alcaraz, who won the men’s singles title at Indian Wells, reclaims the world No. 1 ranking from Novak Djokovic. But can he keep it?INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — The sun was setting in the desert, and dark clouds were gathering, but Carlos Alcaraz was walking jauntily down a hallway in Stadium 1 at the BNP Paribas Open.He had finished ahead of the storm and everything else on his way to the trophy in Indian Wells, securing the title without losing a set, not even against Daniil Medvedev, the hottest hand in tennis, in an unexpectedly lopsided final on Sunday.His 6-3, 6-2 victory — full of exquisitely disguised drop shots, lunging volley winners and other dazzle — did not only stop Medvedev’s 19-match winning streak in a hurry. It also earned Alcaraz a return to the No. 1 singles ranking on Monday, displacing Novak Djokovic, the Serb who is not allowed to enter the United States because he remains unvaccinated for the coronavirus.Djokovic, a five-time singles champion in Indian Wells, is the most successful men’s hardcourt player in tour history. But his decision to forgo vaccination has caused him to miss a string of significant events, including last year’s U.S. Open, which Alcaraz, a Spaniard, won to ascend to the top spot in the rankings for the first time at age 19.“Look, the truth is I’m a player, but I’m also a fan of tennis,” Alcaraz said in an interview on Sunday. “And in the end, having the best players in each tournament and being able to compete with the best is always good. Nobody wants to see people missing tournaments, especially me. I wish Djokovic were in every event and I could play against him and share the locker room with him and learn from him up close.” It is the tennis duel that many would most like to see, and it did not happen in January at the Australian Open, which Djokovic won for the 10th time. Alcaraz missed it because of a leg injury incurred after lunging for a shot in practice shortly before he was scheduled to leave Spain for Australia. He had already missed the end of the 2022 season because of a torn stomach muscle.“That was rough: to miss Australia, a Grand Slam I really wanted to play and thought I would have my chances to win,” Alcaraz said. “But it made me learn from the things I wasn’t doing right. You can be on court for two or three hours a day, but it’s also about how you take care of yourself outside the court: to rest, eat well, take the right supplements.”While the leading men have yet to all gather in the same spot this season, the leading women reunited in the desert and produced a repeat of the high-velocity Australian Open final between the 6-foot power players Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan by way of Moscow.While Sabalenka won in a three-set classic in Melbourne, Rybakina prevailed on Sunday, 7-6 (11), 6-4, saving two set points in a nervy opening set that had even the self-contained Rybakina struggling to keep a poker face.Sabalenka’s stumbling block was a familiar one: double faults. They spoiled much of her early 2022 season, but she worked her way through the problem with help from a biomechanist and served well under duress in Australia. On Sunday, she regressed, making 10 double faults — all in the first set and three in the tiebreaker — and was clearly unsettled by it.“There will be some days when old habits will come back, and you just have to work through it,” she said of what she had learned from the defeat.Rybakina, the reigning Wimbledon champion who is now No. 7 in the rankings, has beaten the No. 1, Iga Swiatek, twice this year, including overwhelming her in the semifinals on Saturday.Alcaraz is only 19. Not even Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic was No. 1 as a teenager.Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressFor now, Alcaraz and Djokovic have played each other just once, with Alcaraz winning on clay in three tight sets on his way to the title in Madrid last May. It is hardly Alcaraz’s fault that they missed each other here in the desert even if it is, to some degree, his problem because he is back at No. 1 under unusual circumstances. Djokovic received no ranking points for winning Wimbledon last year after the tours stripped the venerable tournament of points because of its ban on Russian and Belarusian players, including Medvedev.But Medvedev, after being drubbed on Sunday, said that Alcaraz had earned the top spot and that there should be “no buts” even if the rankings might have been different had Djokovic been able to play a full schedule.“Carlos is deservedly world No. 1,” he said. “He won more points than everybody else in the last 52 weeks, and that’s how rankings work.”Monday also brought bad news for Spanish tennis with Rafael Nadal dropping out of the top 10 for the first time since April 25, 2005, ending a record streak of nearly 18 years. It is hard to imagine Alcaraz or anyone else matching that kind of consistency, but Alcaraz is clearly an incandescent talent: an acrobat in sneakers capable of dominating and mesmerizing.That is a rare combination reminiscent of Roger Federer, the 20-time Grand Slam champion and serial crowd pleaser whose photo was once in Alcaraz’s bedroom at his family’s home in Murcia, Spain. Like Federer, who retired last year at 41, Alcaraz is a fabulous and feline mover who likes variety and the element of surprise with his abrupt changes of pace and fast-twitch forays to the net.“I think he’s a lot more like Roger than Rafa,” said Paul Annacone, a Tennis Channel analyst who coached Federer. “Because Rafa couldn’t take the ball early like this when he was 19, and Rafa couldn’t come forward like this. Roger could always stay on the baseline and always look like he had time, and that’s how this kid looks.”Neither Federer nor Nadal (nor Djokovic) was No. 1 as a teenager. For Annacone, Alcaraz is “the most complete 19-year-old men’s player” in memory, with consistency and decision-making not typically seen in young players.“The interesting thing for me is watching someone who is this athletically talented with his running, jumping, explosiveness and flexibility, but also has the hand-eye coordination to be able to take the ball early on the rise, come forward and volley,” Annacone said. “He also can back up and change pace. He can do everything.”Medvedev certainly looked outmanned on this blustery Sunday: unusually erratic from the baseline and often late to react to Alcaraz’s tactical shifts and to his bold returns from inside the court.Alcaraz served and volleyed effectively but also beat Medvedev at his own game — baseline tennis — with his powerful groundstrokes and deft touch (he hit three straight forehand drop shot winners late in the match).Though doubts remain about his staying power, it has been a convincing comeback. Last month, Alcaraz won on clay in Buenos Aires, then reached the final in Rio de Janeiro, where he reinjured his leg in a loss to Cameron Norrie. But after a few days of rest and therapy, he looked as nimble as ever in Indian Wells.Next stop in this sunshine swing on American hardcourts: the Miami Open, which begins on Friday and where Alcaraz will need to successfully defend his title to keep Djokovic, still in absentia, from reclaiming the No. 1 spot.Their rematch will have to wait for the European clay-court season and hopefully no later than that. More

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in Tennis

      The Carlos Alcaraz Show Returns to Raves

      by

      The 2022 U.S. Open champion, Alcaraz battled injuries in fall and winter. At Indian Wells, he is nearly at full power, dominating opponents and dazzling fans.INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — It’s a pretty easygoing crowd at the BNP Paribas Open in the heart of the Coachella Valley.Spectators soak up the sun. They wander the grounds while gazing at the mountains. They drink cheap beer priced expensively. Sometimes they watch tennis. Often they don’t.And then Saturday night rolled around, and just about every seat in Stadium 1 was occupied on a breezy night in the desert that was chilly enough for puffer jackets.Carlos Alcaraz was in the house, tender hamstring and all, trying to deliver this tournament — and really the sport itself — the kind of juice that only he seems able to deliver these days, especially with Rafael Nadal sidelined with an injury and Novak Djokovic prohibited from entering the United States because of his refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19.To do that, though, Alcaraz, the 19-year-old Spanish star, needs to be on the court, and that has not happened much since he blasted his way to his first Grand Slam title and the No. 1 ranking at the U.S. Open in New York last September.That effort required a series of marathon matches, including one that lasted until nearly 3 in the morning. He has been mostly hobbling ever since. He battled an abdominal injury through the fall. Then, in his final practice before his scheduled journey to the Australian Open, he pulled a hamstring as he sprinted and stretched to reach a short ball.Alcaraz, whose foot-on-the-gas style may make him more prone to injuries, like his compatriot Nadal, returned to play two small tournaments last month in South America. He won the title in Buenos Aires. Then, in Rio de Janeiro, he made the final but aggravated his hamstring midway through his three-set loss to Cameron Norrie of Britain. He pulled out of his next tournament, in Acapulco, to rest for Indian Wells, where tournament organizers fretting over the loss of Nadal and Djokovic were praying that Alcaraz could recover in time.“The tennis insiders knew that there was this new kid, maybe the next Rafa,” Tommy Haas, the German former pro who is the tournament director here, said of Alcaraz in the tense days before the start of the tournament. “And all of a sudden he just has a blowout year and becomes the youngest No. 1 of all time and you go, ‘How is this possible, and how amazing is he to watch?’”There are a handful of players that can make an early-round match feel like a big event, and Alcaraz did so on Saturday night as he ambushed Thanasi Kokkinakis of Australia and won in straight sets.Iga Swiatek of Poland, the women’s No. 1, had played in the afternoon in a mostly empty stadium. Taylor Fritz, the defending champion and top American, and Ben Shelton, also an American and the young season’s brightest surprise, then dueled in a tight, three-set battle that filled a good majority of the Stadium 1 seats. But it was nothing compared with the packed crowd that Alcaraz drew for the night’s final match.Even Jimmy Connors, who knows something about putting on a show, stuck around, sitting high in the stadium in the media seats. Alcaraz was at it again on Monday night, playing in the headliner’s spot — albeit in front of a thinner, school night crowd — against Tallon Griekspoor of the Netherlands. The basketball great and tennis obsessive Dirk Nowitzki was courtside.Alcaraz made a nearly unreachable shot against Tallon Griekspoor on Monday.Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThere is that crackling forehand that sounds different from everyone else’s, more like an ax splitting a log than polyester strings thumping a fuzzy ball. There are all the desperate sprints after nearly out-of-reach balls that so many players ignore. He has the most delicate and deceptive drop shot and stinging volleys.When a willowy drop shot clipped the tape and trickled just over the sideline, he twisted in anguish. How dare the gravity and subtle currents of the desert air conspire to interfere with his attempts at perfection.“I try to make the people enjoy watching tennis,” Alcaraz said after his first win. “And I think the way that I play, they love it.”He will play Jack Draper of Britain in the round of 16 Tuesday evening.The game wears on many younger players. The pressure of expectations, the constant attention and the relentless schedule have toppled top talents, either temporarily, in the case of Nick Kyrgios, or permanently. A year ago, Ashleigh Barty retired as the world No. 1 at 25.There are also players a few years older than Alcaraz who have flirted with his level, or achieved it, only to fall back before fans could get on the bandwagon.Daniil Medvedev won the U.S. Open in 2021 and rose to the top spot in the rankings early last year but won just two minor titles. At the moment, he is on a 16-match winning streak. Stefanos Tsitsipas has made two Grand Slam finals, but nerves and Djokovic got the better of him both times.As for the players who are of Alcaraz’s vintage, they know his early success has set a standard that will be hard to match.“I will try,” Lorenzo Musetti of Italy, who is 21 and grew up playing in junior tournaments with Alcaraz, said unconvincingly with a shake of his head after his second-round loss here over the weekend.So far, Alcaraz has seemed immune to the usual anxieties. His approach?“Live the moment, play the match, and go for it,” he said.Alcaraz has had some help this week in producing the kind of buzz the sport is always seeking. Emma Raducanu of England, who won the 2021 U.S. Open as a qualifier, has gone on a roll, winning three consecutive matches for just the second time since her breakout Grand Slam win.The success has come largely out of nowhere. Raducanu, who last month deleted Instagram from her phone to better focus on herself, has been battling injuries and illnesses, most recently a wrist problem. She hardly prepared for this tournament and didn’t practice for four days ahead of her first match.But on Monday afternoon against Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil, the 13th seed, Raducanu was once more whipping her lethal forehands into the corners and rolling her windmill backhand with a freedom that had been largely absent for the past year. And she was doing it in front of a raucous field-court crowd, just like in the not-so-old days of the 2021 U.S. Open. She was scheduled to play Swiatek on Tuesday in a matchup between the two most recent U.S. Open champions.“I did a really good job mentally of just staying, you know, keep hitting through the shots and trying to be committing to everything, even when it’s tight,” she said after her three-set win.In other words, what the player everyone now calls Carlito plans to do on Tuesday night against Draper, who at 21 may be a rival for long time.“I’m going to enjoy it,” Alcaraz said.More than likely, so will pretty much everyone watching. More