After losing on the court, Carlos Alcaraz was distraught as rarely before, looking for an explanation for this heavy defeat in the second round of the US Open, where he had never given up before the quarter-finals.
“I don’t know what to say,” the Spaniard began to admit in the early hours of Friday.
The Dutchman Botic van de Zandschulp, 74th in the world, is a player well within the reach of Alcaraz who had easily beaten him in their two previous meetings, both on hard courts.
So the world number 3 sank into a surprising explanation: he, who delights in atomizing his opponents or drives them crazy with his touch game, said he was destabilized by the lack of points “given” by van de Zandschulp.
“I thought he was going to give me more points, free points… He didn’t make as many mistakes as I thought he would. So I was a bit confused, I didn’t know how to handle it,” says the player who beat Novak Djokovic twice in a row on Centre Court in the Wimbledon final.
In the middle of the summer, Alcaraz, after triumphing for the first time at Roland-Garros, had won twelve times to secure his second title at Wimbledon and reach the final of the Paris Olympic Games.
– Energy –
“I probably arrived in New York with less energy than I thought,” said the powerful 21-year-old, adding that he did not want to make an excuse for it.
Especially since due to injuries, he only played two of the five tournaments of the clay court season in the spring (Madrid where he lost in the quarter-finals and Roland-Garros), only played two matches (one win, one loss) at Queen’s as preparation for Wimbledon, and one in Cincinnati (loss), a bit thin to prepare for the US Open.
In total, he has only accumulated 29 matches since April, of which 24 have been won.
Last year over the same period, he had played four of the five tournaments on clay with titles in Barcelona and Madrid and a semi-final at Roland-Garros, then won Queen’s and Wimbledon on grass, and followed that up with three tournaments on hard, notably reaching the final in Cincinnati and the semi-finals at Flushing Meadows. That is 45 matches played for a record of 40 victories.
“The schedule is so dense. I’m probably a player who needs more rest before the big tournaments. I have to think about it and learn the lessons” from what happened in New York, he insists.
Facing Van De Zandschulp, he mainly talks about his mental state which was not up to par.
“I’m not mentally well, I’m not strong, I don’t know how to control myself when faced with difficulties, I don’t know how to manage them,” he says.
– Shattered racket –
The Spaniard had already given a glimpse of this psychological weakness in Cincinnati where, in a very rare fit of anger on a court, he had relentlessly smashed his racket on the ground before losing to Gaël Monfils.
“I was coming off a spectacular summer, at Roland-Garros, Wimbledon. I thought I had taken a step forward by realizing that to win big titles you had to be strong in the head. And when I got to hard, I took several steps back,” laments the player who became the youngest world No. 1 by winning the 2022 US Open.
However, he dismisses any negative effects on his mental state from his defeat in the Olympic final against Djokovic.
“It was difficult for 50 minutes, an hour, but then I realized that winning the Olympic silver medal was a great achievement. I was really proud. So I can say that this defeat had no impact,” he assures.
The uncertainty therefore remains over its major underperformance in New York.
“I’ve already experienced this kind of match and each time I told myself that I had to learn from it. What I see is that I haven’t evolved and that’s the problem: I’m here again saying that I didn’t know how to manage, that I didn’t manage to push myself a little (to play better),” he regrets.
The big question for the man who is expected to threaten the records of the Big 3 is whether this state of affairs will last. Djokovic, for his part, is losing one of the main opponents capable of depriving him of a 25th Grand Slam title in New York.
ig/chc
