Facing Carlos Alcaraz on clay becoming similar to challenge of playing Nadal
As Lorenzo Musetti found out on FRiday, many players can hang with Alcaraz for a while, but few can get the job done
Dante Badano / PsnewZ
When Rafael Nadal was marching his way to title after title at Roland-Garros, there was a general feeling on the Tour that it was possible, if someone played their absolute best, for them to match him for a certain period of time but invariably, the Spaniard would wear them down.
Dominic Thiem, in the 2019 final, pushed him hard for two sets before falling away; Alexander Zverev had him worried for two epic sets in 2022 before suffering a nasty ankle injury; many others played out of their minds for a while and made him work, but were eventually seen off. Novak Djokovic did get the better of him a couple of times, of course.
There will surely never be another Rafael Nadal but the challenge of facing Carlos Alcaraz on clay is something similar, as Lorenzo Musetti discovered on Friday.
For two sets, the Italian was probably the better player against Alcaraz, ripping backhands all over the court and denying the defending champion the kind of ball he was looking for. But, as happened so often against Nadal, the sheer physical and mental intensity of matching Alcaraz for two sets and almost two hours proved to be too much as Musetti suffered a left leg injury that eventually saw him retire trailing 2-0 in the fourth set.
“It’s probably, I think, right now if not the toughest challenge in our sport, but one of them,” Musetti admitted. “I have to say that he’s really, really aggressive so you always have to stay there.
“Physically with the one-handed backhand, it’s not easy to manage to deal with some players like Carlos or Jannik (Sinner) or others. So of course physically for me it was really intense. At the end I was feeling these kind of problems. So definitely hard enough.”
Alcaraz: “I know I bring a lot of intensity in the matches”
The problem for those trying to stay with Alcaraz is that he also knows how difficult it is. With so much physical strength and supreme fitness, Alcaraz knows that if he is patient, good things will come, even if the opponent is playing outrageous tennis.
“Playing in such a great level and such a high intensity during three sets is tough,” Alcaraz said. “I know that I bring a lot of intensity in the matches. I think I put some high speed on my shots during the whole match, that probably some other players are not used to play such a high speed or intensity.
“So that (gives) me a lot of confidence in the Grand Slam that I’m thinking that I gonna come back if I lose one or two sets. I tried to push him to the limit. The first two sets was really difficult, intense, and I tried to make him run a lot during the third set just thinking a little bit in the future, as well. That’s important and give me a lot of confidence.”
The Spaniard said people can get carried away with thinking too negatively, just because they lose a set. For him, he said he focuses on the bigger picture.
“Ssometimes in the match I think about, OK, I mean, the player started to play really great tennis, (but) OK, I didn’t go down so much, probably few times in the match, so I’m not worried about it.
“We are in a Grand Slam. We have time to come back. I’m not worried at all about leaving some sets in Grand Slams, because I know that I have time and I’m strong enough mentally to come back.”
MUSETTI: “I had to play my best level to stay with him”
Nevertheless, Musetti said he was happy with his performance, having pushed Alcaraz much closer than in their two previous meetings on clay this year.
“I had to play probably my best level of the tournament to stay there with him,” he said. “I felt today honestly I stepped forward on my level. I felt closer to his level. I maintained the high level that we showed for two hours or whatever.
“Of course I knew it even before stepping on court that I had to play probably the best match of my career so far. For part of it, I was doing a great job, I would say, and I was there physically, technically, mentally. I think I was playing right. Sometimes he wanted to be really aggressive, especially on the return side, and I served really good today.
“So at the end if I have to analyse those two sets, they were really, really great sets. Of course the third one and let’s say the last two games, there was of course no chance to play at his level with this problem. So it was an unlucky situation, but…I think at the end probably he had more than me.”
