It is difficult for him to explain himself to Carlos Alcaraz, just as it was difficult for him to breathe during the match against Casper Ruud. He doesn’t want to make the excuse that he arrived in Turin with physical problems that he paid for in his debut in the Masters Cup, but he doesn’t want to lie either. It was not found. Neither in spirit nor in physical appearance nor in ideas. The result is that he slips in the premiere of this very difficult tournament for national tennis and complicates the possibility of finally breaking almost three decades without men’s trophies. He stumbles again where he did last year, in the first round of the qualifying phase. groups. But with a greater punishment because the defeat is in two sets and not three as in 2023, which allowed him to later add enough games to reach the semifinals. He arrived with things learned, with that feeling that he had managed to extend the campaign beyond the summer, the “but” that Juan Carlos Ferrero objected to last November. If in 2023 he suffered a complex defeat against Daniil Medvedev at the US Open, then fatigue got the better of him: semifinals in Beijing against Sinner, round of 16 against Dimitrov in Shanghai and first round at the Paris-Bercy Masters 1,000. In 2024, a downturn after the Games, with a broken racket in Cincinnati and a second round in the US Open, from which he recovered in the Davis Cup, in the Laver Cup, with the title in Beijing and the quarterfinals in Shanghai. As an anecdote, the stumble against Ugo Humbert in Paris-Bercy. He arrived in Turin full of adrenaline. But also loaded with viruses. It is difficult for him to start the Masters Cup, and he has two first breaking points in his favor, but the right one is closing in on him. And the serve doesn’t respond, only six points with that shot in the entire first set. Nor the left ones, the result of the haste with which the Murcian begins to play. Too much hurry, wants to think little, few exchanges, little time on the court, go to rest, try to breathe. This is celebrated by the Norwegian, who had never beaten the Spaniard in four duels and arrived in Turin with eight tournaments in a row without passing the first or second round. He who has been a semi-finalist in the three editions he has played becomes a rock and takes advantage of Alcaraz’s incoherent version to put a fang in the fourth game and another in the sixth and complete a 6-1 in 36 minutes that says a lot about him and of his perseverance, tennis worker as he is, and much more of his rival, who is not there although he is eagerly awaited. He was the first. «Before coming I got sick, but the training was going well. He could compete, play, face long exchanges. I was hoping that as the days went by it would get better. And today I don’t know if it’s because of nerves or something else that I haven’t felt completely well. My belly has limited me from playing freely. I could have done better, yes. I know that I am not going to feel good in every game I play this year, but it has made it difficult for me not to breathe well, choking has limited my recovery between points. This seems to detract from what Casper has played, or that it sounds like an excuse, but if I feel bad I feel bad,” the Murcian said later. Related News standard No Tennis Paula Badosa’s gesture with Valencia: she will donate half of the prize for participating in the finals of the Billie Jean King Cup MZ standard No Tennis | Sinner Masters Cup, without mercy against De Miñaur Laura Marta She pulls with pride in the second set and in half an hour she makes amends for the mess of the previous one, which Ruud can’t handle as much. Cheer up the stands because this is a little more the Alcaraz they expected, the one who finds his first serve and raises his finger for a 5-2, a promise that 1-6 has only been a disconnection of his. But it’s not the day, no matter how much menthol there is to open the airways during the breaks, the wrist still doesn’t tune up and the ideas don’t come out, repetitive in the errors. They know it in the box, not even a gesture to change from the outside something that they know is not possible to change from the inside. There is accumulated fatigue and they are not managing it well. Cooling down and those antibiotics that stick in your stomach don’t help either. «All the players are mentally tired. The one I say doesn’t lie. But there are those who carry it better than others. I’m tired. The schedule is very demanding. I haven’t had many days off. You finish a tour and you only have three days off and you have to get back on track in another part of the world. You accumulate many hours and days. “This year I have done better than last year, but I have to find a way to have a good tennis performance even when you are tired.” He couldn’t do it at the premiere of this competition that he longs for. Ruud finds the wound and digs into it with the tenacity that characterizes him. And Alcaraz is starting to run out of air again. Off, dazed, unable to hold his serve, he gave up his twice and accepted defeat against his body and against the Norwegian, who sentenced him with a direct serve that forced a full recovery to advance to the semi-finals. He has to beat Zverev and Rublev no matter what and hope that other results minimize the slip, but there is hope in this unique tournament that even grants second chances. As happened to him in 2023, although his defeat was in three sets. «After today I don’t want to think much either. If I base myself on today’s feelings, it is very difficult to think about the semifinals. The good thing about tennis is that you can have bad feelings one day and the next day have others, and the match may come (on Wednesday, against Andrey Rublev) and you may play the best of the year. There have been many players who started out losing and ended up winning. Last year I didn’t have a good feeling and ended up in the semi-finals in a tough draw. “Hopefully I can feel better and we’ll see,” Alcaraz tries to breathe. He has no objections to the track, much better than the one he had to deal with in the Paris-Bercy Masters 1,000, defeat in the second round against Ugo Humbert. «The track is good, there has been a sudden change between Paris and this, but this helps there be more exchanges. I like them a little slower, Paris was an exaggeration. There wasn’t much tennis seen. I defend that in front of the spectator, if there are no exchanges, and that it is played only with the serve as a fundamental weapon, it does not attract attention. “I like the track and the speed.” But he is not so happy with the balls, something that Daniil Medvedev also criticized. «You have to find a way to put balls that really help on the court. Here after a game you can no longer play, they become very big and it is impossible to make a winner. There are more exchanges, yes, but they also have to look out for us, so that after a game they don’t become like bears and it is difficult to move them a lot and find spaces. However, he continues to learn to adapt to everything. And with tennis and foreign references, like Ilia Topuria. «I thought about who had influenced me the most this year and I thought about him for the work he has done and for the trust. They can talk a lot, they can talk badly, make you doubt, but self-confidence is superior to everything. Ilia’s confidence in himself making history is something to admire and it has inspired me a lot to have that confidence that sometimes I had doubts.
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