The Palazzo Reale in Turin frames a fantasy evening. It is Italy, with all its flavor and its history, with all its heritage: its architecture, its sculpture, its infinite arcades, its charming lack of control – the event begins and ends with a considerable delay – and this Friday, also with its tennis players, the eight monuments of this season. One by one they ascend the beautiful staircase that leads to a room surrounded by tapestries, canvases and coffered ceilings, glass and hanging lamps, vertical mirrors and marble, well marble. There is nothing left over. Welcome to the opulent north of Piedmont, where every corner illustrates and is worth it, it is impossible not to stop and drool; This Masters Cup also deserves it, with the almighty Novak Djokovic at the helm, necessary airs of youth and another more than suggestive attraction with the first appearance of Carlos Alcaraz, smiling.
ATP Master of Ceremonies Nicola Arzani play at home, but he is amazed at the coming and going of a good handful of people that he cannot identify; Strange, few things escape him. The local journalists (journalists?) enter and leave and, finally, the tennis players burst in. First up are Nole, Jannik Sinner, Holger Rune and Stefanos Tsitsipas, the Greek wrapped in a shearling poncho that generates some laughter. “I love it, it suits you…”, says the serious Sinner, who on the court is an iceberg and off the court has no shortage of humor. “Janiiiiik!”, shouts the Russian Andrey Rublev, a member of the group who will speak next, as he passes through the room. The Italian will make his debut in the competition on Sunday, like the first-timer Rune and the big boss Djokovic. The latter praises the Nordic, now coached by his former coach, Boris Becker, and the German, also present in the room and attentive, is a colleague of his Serbian friend: “Thank you, Novak, thank you!”.
Once the first shift is closed, Grupo Verde, the Red roster enters the scene, which will go into action a day later. Alcaraz will do it early in the afternoon (2:30 p.m.) and assures that “one hundred percent,” the Murcian repeats up to four times, covered in a red and white baseball jacket, dotted in the left pectoral area with a collection of diamonds that They flash every time you maneuver. A cell phone rings in the middle of the exhibition and Daniil Medvedev, the tough guy who has to deal with the stands of half the world, dances and has fun. Spanish is covered by two others -ev, Rublev and Alexander Zverev, and tells those present that when he was 14 years old he played (and won, although he doesn’t say so) the youth tournament at the O2 in London and that then he saw something that dazzled him. That something was a certain Roger Federer.
The Swiss is, along with Djokovic, the owner of the master record, with six titles each. He looks for El Palmar first, but the autumn, as beautiful as it is treacherous, because of the transition, he can confuse anyone; also to him, who after his summer stay in New York has not finished offering that overwhelming and entertaining game. He responded in Beijing, the semi-finals, but lost his breath in Shanghai, in the round of 16, and definitively failed in Paris-Bercy, where he stumbled in the first round against Roman Safiullin, a good tennis player who, under normal circumstances, should not have represented any major opposition to him. For this reason, this newspaper tells him that he has the staff confused and that it is not known which Alcaraz we will see these days at the Pala Alpitour in Turin, and the boy responds with a good face.
Controlled pain
“Well, I expect a Carlos like the one at the beginning of the year, to be honest, despite the results I have had in these last tournaments. I think the defeat in Paris was quite painful, but it made me see that I have to work more, that I have to work harder, and that is what I have done. You always have to look for the positive in things and the fact of losing early there has allowed me to have several days to train well and come here in optimal condition. I think I’ve done a great job these days, both physically and tennis-wise, and I feel pretty good,” he explains after having a great time in the morning during a promotional event for the sports brand that dresses him, hand in hand with Sinner, another player’s delight. Present and future both.
For him it is “a gift to be here”, despite the fact that “we have earned it”, and in the face of the insistence of those interested in whether having arrived with a lower profile at this last tournament of the year can benefit him and help him let go. again, to recover the physical, technical and mental spark lost in the last two performances, he answers: “It could be. In the end, I have always said that the fight for number one was the main objective and right now [a 1.490 puntos de Nole, campeón reciente en Bercy] I think I have practically lost it. So I’m going to try to take that to my advantage. I’m not going to think about that, but about being here; “It is my debut and we are going to enjoy it as much as possible.”
Two years ago, before the big boom, Alcaraz walked through the promising Masters Cup in Milan; an appointment that was already too small for him and in which he signed a full victory (5); he only conceded one set. He now fights between heavy artillery, big words. There is no respite even in rehearsals, like this last one with Djokovic. He does not relax the Balkan (36 years old) even by chance. “The truth is that it doesn’t surprise me,” he says. “In the end you train how you are going to play, so there are no secrets. Training makes perfection…” he adds before the intentional pause: “And he is practically perfect, so it doesn’t surprise me that he trains this way.” He assures that the pain that has affected him in the final stretch of the course (plantar fascia, back) is controlled (“care in detail”) and that he faces the challenge with guarantees. sprint definitive among the strongest, without damage that a priori can condition you. Absent for a year due to an abdominal tear that occurred a few days before the Turin match, the Murcian finally appears in the big photo. Gone were the etiquette and the suits; Even Djokovic (blue and black baseball player) joins the rejuvenation. New times in the Finals.
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