Carlos Alcaraz tastes another victory, this one with a better flavor than those previously achieved against Juncheng Shang and Yibing Wu, taking into account that there were embers. The summer defeat against Gael Monfils in Cincinnati, a couple of months ago, hurt the Murcian greatly, when he had lost his lucidity and exploded in a sequence never seen before. But the venting of that afternoon gives way to the impeccable intervention of the autumn, resolved by 6-4 and 7-5 (in 1h 27m) and sealed in peace, in some way redeeming: score settled. The number two continues the good progress and will meet this Thursday in the quarterfinals with the Czech Tomas Machac (3-6, 6-3 and 6-3 to Tommy Paul), knowing that he has already had 12 victories since he stumbled in Nueva York and that is not far from the 15 that he registered two years ago in his best series. He managed this Wednesday’s challenge with maturity and knocked down a tennis player who brought back a bad memory, still capable of disturbing.
Because at 38 years old, Monfils, a war veteran with almost 900 games under his belt, remains an unpredictable opponent who should be tied short and not allowed to take flight. There remains the episode of the August rackets, a day of frustration and also of warning, and therefore the determined staging of the Murcian, who this Wednesday approached with everything and tried to avoid the mess that the Frenchman was trying to impose. Intelligent, he combined speeds, heights and angles to try to destabilize, but this time he came across a very different version: that of the solid and patient Alcaraz of these days. Far from being carried away by the deceitful inertia that the rallies were acquiring, the Spaniard took shelter on the baseline and from there began cracking the Frenchman with his two forehands, because that backhand spits almost with as much power as the drive.
There was no shortage of brushstrokes from both, both with a circus spirit, a delight for the viewer. However, the number two reacted to everything seriously, without entering the game as the one in front intended. “I don’t think he’s going to beat me, I think he’s going to crush me. One hundred percent. “He is a legend in the making,” Monfils anticipated in the anteroom, throwing the first shot, to see if the praise would relax the young man and thus gain some ground to get more out of his antics. But nothing at all. An entertaining balance, fire after fire and stones of all colors, but only one voice at the moment of truth, that of Alcaraz. Without distractions and with a lot of determination, the Murcian knew how to wait for the moment and attack when he had to, decanting each set with a break; The first was extended (to the ninth game) and the culmination was even longer (to the eleventh).
“I have tried to stay calm, control my emotions and wait for my opportunities. In the second set I had some options to break him at the beginning and I didn’t take advantage of them, but I tried to remain calm, because I knew that more would come,” he pointed out at the foot of the court, before the next fight with Machac, whom he defeated ago, was confirmed. a month in the context of the Davis Cup; He did it, of course, after having given up the first set and the Czech leaving after conceding the second due to a muscle problem. Therefore, guard up. “I had to try to be as calm as possible, because I knew that would help me a lot. I’m feeling the ball really well, much better than on the North American tour. So I’m happy to have done it again and I hope it continues like this,” said the winner, relentless for now on this Asian track that is returning the verve lost after the Olympic Games to his tennis.
Praiseworthy, in any case, is Monfils’ unbreakable guerrilla spirit, clinging to the duel from start to finish. He temporized, he pulled service to compensate for the logical physical deficit—17 years of difference between the two—and he rebelled against the authoritarian moment of the Spaniard, but in the end he bowed. With equal number of winners’ shots (22) and an even record of errors (9-13), he decided the edge with the serve. The one from El Palmar was more inspired, denying the only option available to the rival and sealing their access to the quarterfinals. He thus records his best result in the tournament and continues to extend the sequence post-US Openwhile Jannik Sinner also advances in parallel. The number one reduced the striker Ben Shelton (6-4 and 7-6(1) and will face this Thursday the Russian Daniil Medvedev, who dispatched the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas (7-6(3) and 6-3). If both progress, Alcaraz and Sinner would meet again in the semifinals.
