So far has Carlos Alcaraz come, and so fast, that although he has won four majors and been to No.1, it still feels as if he is solidifying before our eyes.
He’s the next big thing, here already, but sometimes it’s as if tournament directors are still sizing him up, too. On Friday, he played on Rod Laver Arena for the first time in this tournament, but even then in a day game. It was on Broadway, but only just.
It’s hard to imagine Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal in their pomp being marginalised in this way. Novak Djokovic admits he insists on a day in his own scheduling.
Carlos Alcaraz roars in victory.Credit: AP
There are legitimate broadcast reasons for Alcaraz’s hitherto absence from centre court, and he prefers to play in the day anyway, so it’s not as if this is some sort of snub. He was happy to bide his time.
In any case, it was worth centre court’s wait. Alcaraz marked the occasion with a typically entertaining four-set win over Portugal’s Nunes Borges, 6-2, 6-4, 6-7 (3-7), 6-2. But for a little looseness in the third set tie-breaker, he would have prevailed in straight sets. He’s won every other set in this tournament. But fans were probably happy to stay for a bonus fourth set this day.
Borges is no plodder. He’s No.33 in the world, a title winner in his own right, beating Nadal in a final, who last year had his best year on the circuit. There’s nothing obviously lacking in his game, and his competitive instinct is strong.
But this was Alcaraz, still only 21 and with only the Australian Open missing from his collection. He’s far from complete, but his game is replete. This day, he hit 54 winners to Borges’ 15. On the forehand, the score was 30-5. Several were stone-cold. Alcaraz’s forehand is like a less-evolved version of Federer’s, which is hardly surprising; who is fully evolved at 21?
The match was scored by two sounds, Alcaraz’s grunt as he put all he had into a shot, and Borges’ groan as he defended. It’s a measure of the Portuguese’s quality that he stretched the encounter out to three hours. Alcaraz also made slightly more errors than Borges, but that is always the way of the aggressor.
His best points were memorable. Once, he middled a volley as he rushed the net, despite the ball clipping it. Another time, he ran down a drop shot from Borges, who lobbed him, only for Alcaraz to chase it down and while running away from the net lob the ball into the opposite corner for a winner.
At least twice, he reached until the racquet came away from his hands. The first time, it left Borges to hit a winner into an empty court. Alcaraz laughed. These were highlights, not necessarily his modus operandi. But he says he plays to entertain, and you’d better believe it. Unlike others we could name, he entertains on his own account, not by belittling others.
As well as that Federer-ish forehand, Alcaraz has some Nadal-like mannerisms. At each change of ends, he touched the roof of the canopy over his seat, then took swigs from three bottles carefully lined up at his feet, in the same order each time, before carefully replacing them. He’s also a little picky about where he walks.
Federer’s forehand, Nadal’s tics: That sounds like a pretty good prototype for a tennis player.
But Alcaraz is from no mould. You only have to look at him to know it. Bareheaded and in a singlet, Alcaraz is exposed like no other on the circuit. To the naked eye, his biceps have grown in the same proportion as his game. He’d certainly like to think so.
His serve is solid; he did not lose it once this day. He has a deft drop shot that is made all the more effective by the depth of his other groundstrokes. Borges is fast around the corner, but even he was left helpless.
Alcaraz also has a penchant for tweeners. Once, this might have been thought of as a 21-year-old’s flights of fancy, but like the reverse sweep in cricket, it’s an erstwhile indulgence that has become a legitimate defence.
So it was that everything about this match was forseeable, but no less enjoyable to watch on a balmy afternoon on a sunkissed arena. Borges did well to pace Alcaraz through to the end of the third set, but was under the hammer in every service game in the fourth and finally broke.
As many before him have found and many others will: There’s no escape from Alcaraz.
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