How do you solve a problem like Carlos Alcaraz? It is a puzzle that has dominated the early months of the season, and one that promises to define the men’s game for years to come.
As Stefanos Tsitsipas discovered at the US Open last September, merely trading blows from the baseline is unlikely to cut it. At the absurdly precocious age of 18, Alcaraz is already among the tour’s most powerful and dynamic shot-makers, a reality he underlined when pushing Rafael Nadal to the brink of defeat 10 days ago in Indian Wells.
Yet the Spaniard’s firepower is allied with fight and finesse. A war of attrition is no more likely to dismay him than a battle of wits. Only Nadal and Matteo Berrettini have stopped Alcaraz since the turn of the year, and the latter defeat – suffered in a fifth-set tiebreak at the Australian Open, in a match he had led by two sets to love – was swiftly avenged as the teenager cut through the draw to win last month’s Rio Open.
On Tuesday night in Miami, Tsitsipas thought he had alighted upon an answer to one of the sport’s most insoluble problems. The Greek third seed refused to speak of payback for Flushing Meadows before the match, promising only to “put my soul out there and give it my all”. Yet the energy and intensity with which he set about his task offered a clear statement of intent. Tsitsipas threw the kitchen sink at his young opponent. Taking the ball early, ripping groundstrokes and charging the net with abandon – much as he had done against Australia’s Alex de Minaur in the previous round, where he won all but two of his 21 forays into the forecourt – Tsitsipas raced into a 5-2 lead.
It was tennis of the highest order, yet Alcaraz first matched his rival’s level and then raised the bar still higher, reeling off seven successive games to lay the foundations for a 7-5, 6-3 victory that offered further confirmation of his stellar trajectory.
“I thought I would lose the first set … it was really, really tough,” said Alcaraz, who now finds Serbia’s Miomir Kecmanovic, a 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 winner over Indian Wells champion Taylor Fritz, standing between him and a second successive Masters semi-final.
“He was playing unbelievable. All I can say is I fought until the last ball in the first set to come back.”
It is not so long ago that the Greek, with his all-court game and eye-catching blend of power and elegance, was being talked up as the next big thing, and the combination of his apparent eagerness to remind the watching world of his qualities and Alcaraz’s muscular, dogged defiance made for compelling viewing.
A popcorn encounter? Try hot dogs, a couple of which were served up in the third game in an exchange already guaranteed to rank among the season’s most memorable. Tsitsipas seemed to have Alcaraz on a string when he drew him in with a drop shot before lunging to flick a deep lob volley over his head, but Alcaraz somehow chased it down, sending a “tweener” sailing beyond his astonished opponent. Tsitsipas responded in kind, haring back to the baseline to clip the ball through his legs, but the ubiquitous Spaniard was already back at the net, from where he slotted away a backhand volley.
Tsitsipas had already missed a chance to break in the previous game and, as a frisson of excitement ran through the crowd, he might have been forgiven for harbouring early misgivings about whether it would be his day. But having gamely weathered the storm he broke in the sixth game, the pace and length of his groundstrokes drawing a trio of forehand errors from Alcaraz, and in the eighth game he served for the set.
There, however, Tsitsipas momentarily faltered, delivering his only double fault of the match. It was all the invitation Alcaraz required. Ripping his groundstrokes with venom and margin, the Spaniard broke back, conjured a pair of stunning topspin backhand lobs to hold and then break, and then served out the set to love. Tsitsipas would win only three more games.