ATP Miami – Alcaraz always precocious: The 5 crazy achievements of the Spanish prodigy

The youngest champion in Miami

The 3rd youngest winner of a Masters 1000

Since the creation of the Masters Series in 1990, only two players have won a tournament in this category earlier than Carlos Alcaraz. At 18 years and 157 days, Michael Chang had lifted the trophy in Toronto in 1990. Fifteen years later, Rafael Nadal had achieved a similar feat at 18 years and 318 days in Monte Carlo. Alcaraz therefore joins the very tight club of three champions in Masters 1000 before having celebrated their 19th birthday.

Youngest to reach at least the semis in Indian Wells and Miami

Even before he went to the end of his Florida adventure, Alcaraz had accomplished another feat: making the “Sunshine Double” of the semi-finals, in other words reaching the last four in Indian Wells and Miami, at only 18 years old. It’s simple, he’s the only one to have done it so early. Four other players have succeeded at the age of 19: Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Andre Agassi. They all conquered the place of world number 1 thereafter, we saw more bad sign for the career of the young Carlos.

The youngest winner of an ATP 500

Alcaraz now has three ATP titles in the bag, one in each tournament category except the Grand Slams: Umag (ATP 250), Rio de Janeiro (ATP 500) and Miami (Masters 1000). Before panicking the counters in the United States, he had already marked his territory on Brazilian clay in February. In this category (the ATP 500) created in 2009, he is also the youngest champion in 151 occurrences. The performance now seems almost modest compared to its results in Masters 1000 but it remains extraordinary.

Youngest US Open quarter-finalist

That was seven months ago and Carlos Alcaraz has changed dimension since then. But for those who wonder about his ability to repeat such results on the long format of five sets, he had provided a more than convincing answer to Flushing Meadows. By venturing to the quarter-finals at 18, he had become the youngest player to go this far at the US Open in the Open era. And in Grand Slam, you had to go back to Michael Chang at Roland-Garros in 1990 (31 years earlier therefore) to find traces of a more successful teenager.