Throughout the course of his meteoric rise, joy has been Carlos Alcaraz’s stock-in-trade. A player who seems to revel in his bold, instinctive shot-making every bit as much as those who watch him, almost as though he were a spectator at his own show, Alcaraz has a ready smile and a penchant for showmanship that, at the age of 20, have already established him as a crowd favourite wherever he goes.
Indeed, the Spaniard’s dexterity is such that, watching him blast mighty forehands into the corners and caress delicate drop shots that clear the net by infinitesimal margins, it can be easy to forget that tennis is one of the world’s most challenging and frustrating sports. But on Friday night in Toronto, Alcaraz received a brutal reminder of that truth as he was bundled out of the Canadian Open by Tommy Paul, a 26-year-old American ranked 14 in the world, for the second year in a row.
Paul’s 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 quarter-final victory will be remembered not only for the Australian Open semi-finalist’s all-court excellence, but also for the manner in which Alcaraz slipped to defeat. As the Spaniard struggled to find his customary precision and consistency, his trademark smiles gave way to snarls of exasperation. After finishing the opening set as he began it, with a double-fault, Alcaraz hurled his racket towards his chair; after a wayward return game early in the second set, he loudly and repeatedly exclaimed “No puedo!” – “I can’t!” – towards his box. It was all very un-Alcaraz.
“I realise that I didn’t play well, you know, these matches,” said the Spaniard, who blew a 5-2 lead in the final set of a tight 3-6, 7-6 (7-2), 7-6 (7-3) win over Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz in the previous round.
“All I can do now is practice to be better. I have some weeks before US Open. But now I have to be focused on Cincinnati. It’s a Masters 1000. It’s a big tournament as well. So I have to talk with my team. I have to fly to Cincinnati, prepare well.
“But, obviously, I take a lot of lessons from this tournament, coming to the next ones.”
History suggests it would be unwise to read too much into Alcaraz’s early loss at what was his first tournament since last month’s Wimbledon victory over Novak Djokovic. The last player to follow a maiden win at the All England Club with a title at their next tournament was Rafael Nadal, who won in Toronto in 2008 just three weeks after defeating Roger Federer in SW19. Regardless of the outcome here, Alcaraz will begin his title defence in New York later this month disputing favouritism with Djokovic.
Nor should Paul’s role in denying the Spaniard a 50th match win of the season be overlooked. The American earned a place in his first Masters 1000 semi-final the hard way, absorbing Alcaraz’s pace, feasting on his opponent’s second serve and producing a dominant display at the net, where he was successful in all but two of his 23 forays. Not even a moment of spectacular athleticism from Alcaraz, who fired a tweener for a winning pass amid a rare spell of dominance, could derail Paul. Shrugging off the loss of the second set, the American forced a volleying error to claim a break in the sixth game of the decider and never looked back.
“Even though he’s the best player in the world right now, he’s No 1 in the world, I think the level overall was better last year,” said Paul, who has now won two of his three meetings with Alcaraz.
“But I think my game plan was a little bit more set this year. I had never played him, never stepped foot on court with him before that first match. So I was kind of figuring it out. He was figuring me out.
“I know, after that match last year, he was saying that he was dealing with pressure of being at the top of the game. And, I mean, he’s changed a lot. He’s grown a lot, and he’s definitely handling that pressure pretty well, going into Wimbledon and tearing it up there.
“[But] it helps knowing that you can beat your opponent. You never want to walk on the court and be like, ‘I don’t know if I can beat this guy.’ It’s the attitude you’ve got to have no matter who you are playing. I would say it helped a little bit.”
With that in mind, a semi-final against Jannik Sinner should not be a source of trepidation for Paul, who won the most recent of his two meetings with the Italian on the grass courts of Eastbourne last summer. Sinner, seeded seventh, came through his quarter-final against the French veteran Gaël Monfils 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.
In the bottom half, Alex de Minaur will face Spain’s Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. The unseeded Australian saw off Daniil Medvedev, the second seed, 7-6 (9-7), 7-5 to ensure that the tournament will produce a first-time Masters 1000 winner.