Victory at US Open: Carlos Alcaraz is the best tennis player in the world

Carlos Alcaraz is the best tennis player in the world. The triumph at the US Open – he won the final against the Norwegian Casper Ruud 6:4, 2:6, 7:6 (1), 6:3 – catapulted him to the top of the world rankings; at 19 years and 129 days he is the youngest person in history to have made it there. You can climb up the stands to the team around coach Juan Carlos Ferrero; who gets notarized to be the best in the world at that age? Even more: Alcaraz has fundamentally changed men’s tennis in New York.

Of course, the picture is currently distorted because Novak Djokovic is known to have been neither in Melbourne nor New York and did not receive any world ranking points for the Wimbledon triumph, which is why Alcaraz is number one with the fewest points (6740). Djokovic will of course come back, but he will find a different men’s tennis; personally and playfully. The Evolution of Power Baselinersstarted 40 years ago with Ivan Lendl’s powerful baseline game, has come to a preliminary conclusion at this US Open with the fabulous performance of Alcaraz.

Tennis is a game of positions, Rafael Nadal said after his round of 16 defeat; his contribution to evolution is that he positions himself so far behind the baseline that some viewers don’t see him at all. This complicates groundstroke angles, this US Open saw the vertical response to that.

If you want to win Grand Slam tournaments in the future, you should work on your volley game

Movement prodigies like Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev (Russia), Frances Tiafoe (USA) and Ruud are difficult to annoy with groundstrokes; there are two strategies against it: get to the net yourself, or lure the other there with a stop. That opens up the rallies because it comes back to the moments you remember from Serve and Volley knows what Alcaraz showed again and again in the final: “I’m good on the net, the serve came,” he said: “I wanted to play rallies differently because his returns came very deep.”

So: The one on the net has to show presence, reaction and feel for the ball, the other player has to play around him, somehow. This is how rallies are created, in which the audience freaks out over volley stops, backhand smashes like in badminton, crazy lobs and their running, as well as winning shots driven to the extreme such as short cross and longline passing hammer with subsequent splits.

Welcome to the next evolution of tennis, the man Drop or Go can name and which Alcaraz has already mastered almost to perfection. If you want to win Grand Slam tournaments in the future, you should hone your volley game as soon as possible, familiarize yourself with the geometric possibilities, develop floor exercise mobility and practice delicate stops. Robotic baseline bolting shouldn’t be enough in the future, especially in best-of-five games. Alcaraz represents, the world number one determines the culture, a new species in this sport. The brainteaser for everyone else is to develop a counter-movement to this movement; and anyone who knows Djokovic knows that he followed this tournament with strategy paper in hand.

A new era, then; in the technology sector it is then: “Adapt or die”. Transferred to tennis: adapt, or rather forget about the dream of a Grand Slam victory. Alcaraz shouldn’t get any worse, on the contrary: He should work on the small wobbles that meant he could have failed in the quarterfinals against the Italian Jannik Sinner if Sinner had converted his match point in the fourth set on his own serve and no tremors -Backhand played out – and then didn’t play a trembling forehand out with the breakball. So a four-set defeat turned into an epic five-hour, fifteen-minute fight with the latest end of history in New York (2:50 a.m.) – that’s the second element, like Alcaraz this tournament and thus men’s tennis has shaped.

“I’m enjoying it now, but I want more,” says Alcaraz

In sports in particular, absolute classifications such as “world’s best” are excellent for debate; or what it means when the world leader and defending champion Medvedev loses in the round of 16; against Nick Kyrgios (Australia), who everyone trusts to be the best in the world. But then he fails because of Karen Khachanov (Russia), who is 27th – and who in turn has no chance against Ruud, who becomes number two in the world due to the final and would have been first if he had won.

Open detailed view

Titles are all well and good, but it is also significant how one wins. Whether he delivers moments that are tattooed in the memory forever. This velvet half-volley stop in the five-set quarterfinals against 2014 winner Marin Cilic (Croatia), who, as a representative of the serve-forehand-power-baseliners, only came to the net as often as Alcaraz because he constantly lured him there. The behind-the-back smack on Sinner. The rally in the five-set crime thriller against Tiafoe, in which the two fought a duel on the net that was reminiscent of badminton and in which you don’t quite understand how it was physically possible even after looking five times.

Duels will not be forgotten when one shoots the other off the pitch – which is why no one remembers Alcaraz’s first three opponents in New York. For something unforgettable, you urgently need equal opponents, which Alcaraz had: He subtracted the old-school baseliner Cilic from the tableau and then delivered unforgettable moments with people whose 25th birthday is still to come and who like it similarly Drop or Go play like Alcaraz. So it’s not a one-off phenomenon, it’s a movement.

“I’m enjoying it now, but I want more – that’s why I’ll train immediately, even after these two weeks,” said Alcaraz afterwards: “I’m hungry for more; I want to win more trophies like this.” Alcaraz came to New York as what is called a “breath of fresh air”; and many of which turn out to be a gentle breeze. He leaves the facility as a “new species in men’s tennis” and number one in the rankings. And thus as: the best tennis player in the world.