Alcaraz’s penultimate attempt

Carlos Alcaraz has two runs left this season: the ATP Finals, which starts for him this Monday, and the Davis Cup, which starts next week. Two tournaments in which he will play his first master’s crown and his first salad bowl, and also say goodbye to Rafael Nadal.

The Murcian has been able to rest for a week since his second-round loss at the Paris-Bercy Masters 1000 and has cleared his calendar in this final stretch of the year to make sure this event, the jewel in the ATP crown, is guaranteed. This will be his second appearance in this tournament after he was unable to compete in 2022 due to a muscle injury and will reach the semi-finals in 2023. However, this will be the first time he has appeared as a contender and last year he defeated Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev in the group stage but was eliminated in the semi-finals by Novak Djokovic. The one from El Palmar arrived at this stage of the course exhausted.

“This would be the best season with a gold medal, but I give myself an 8.5 or 9,” ​​Alcaraz, who has won two Grand Slams (Roland Garros and Wimbledon) and the Masters, said at a pre-tournament news conference. tournament 1000 (Indian Wells) and ATP 500 (Beijing), as well as Olympic silver in Paris.

The Murcian can’t be faulted in a season in which he won 52 of 63 games and still has two cherries on the cake. The first one, the one that was played in Turin, starts for him this Monday against an opponent who has excellent control of the measure, Casper Ruud.

The Norwegian crossed him four times, always coming out on top and winning only two sets in the 2022 US Open final. In addition to the painful 4-0 scoreline, Ruud arrives after four defeats in a row, including the quarter-finals in Stockholm. and the first rounds of Basel, Paris-Bercy and Metz.

Djokovic’s absence

It was the loss of Djokovic, who was suffering from injury, that allowed the race to Turin to relax and Ruud, who signed up for Metz last week to try to earn enough points for the Italian tournament, emerged without complications in the final hour. It is curious that, despite the fact that, along with grass, these should be the worst conditions for him, the Norwegian reached the semi-finals and finals in his two performances in Turin.

In 2021 he lost in the semi-finals to Daniil Medvedev, and in 2022 he lost in the final to Djokovic. His record in the tournament is positive: five wins and four losses, although he never beat a higher-ranked opponent here. On the same day, Alexander Zverev, recent Paris-Bercy winner and two-time world title winner in 2018 and 2021, will face Andre Rublev.

Alcaraz still doesn’t know his opponent in Wednesday’s second round as the tournament selects them based on what happens in the first match. If he wins against Ruud, he will face the winner of the Zverev-Rublev fight, and if he loses, then he will face the loser. Thus, matches in which nothing is at stake are avoided on the third day.

Alcaraz is guaranteed to finish the year in third position in the rankings, since even after winning the tournament undefeated, which would have added 1,500 points, he was unable to overtake Zverev in second position. Jannik Sinner, in turn, with an advantage of more than 3,500 points over Alcaraz and 3,000 over Zverev, will become number one at the end of the year for the first time in his career. The undefeated winner of the tournament will take home €4.4 million, the largest prize in non-exhibition tennis history.