The peace is over. The murmur, the queue, came The Queuestrawberries, Pimm’s, nuclear white, flowers, hats, perfectly shaved green. Everything that makes Wimbledon so fascinating. Everything so perfect, hairs eight millimetres away. District 19 of London wakes up this Monday in full swing – the lady wrapped in a Palestinian flag loudly denounces as she walks down Church Road towards the club – and the latest champion bursts in spotless. Amidst all this charm and fascination, a dreamlike setting, Carlos Alcaraz sets foot on the Centre Court and returns exactly as he left a year ago: victorious, happy, enjoying himself. It’s enough for him to go at half speed, although he finds a surprising challenge: 7-6 (3), 7-5 and 6-2, in 2h 22m. Prolific performance against the Estonian Mark Lajal, who plays with the racket and collaborates to make it enjoyable; if he’s going to fall, he thinks with that Generation Z instinct, better to have a good time. So they have fun.
They are 21 years old (both 2003) and their spirit pushes them to try to entertain. The Murcian does not need much to make us sigh and his rival does not detract from the opportunity, because he has not seen another like it – six matches in the elite, more defeats (4) than triumphs (2) – and he tries to be up to par; after all, it is not every day that a tournament like Wimbledon opens, unique among the only ones, and there are not too many opportunities to play against Alcaraz, who in competitive terms pushes only as much as strictly necessary. With a couple of opportune accelerations it is enough. Slowly, this is long; but without getting overconfident. He resolves the first set with a precise start in the tie-break and recovers the ground conceded in the second with a break to love and another push that brings Lajal (269th in the world, right-handed, considerable strength) back to reality. The third one falls directly to his side, simply natural inertia; same hedonistic spirit, two different worlds when it comes to competing.
David Beckham applauds him from the front row of the Royal Boxwrapped the Sir in his elegant tan suit. The Englishman — his right foot is shaped like a banana — knows something about impossible parabolas, pronounced curves and spin, and he appreciates the artistic details that the Spaniard’s strings occasionally spit out, delicate when volleying but forceful in the execution from the back. This time he prioritizes practicality, it is a friendly first round. But there are always details. “The savior of tennis (who still lives with his mother)”, the magazine of the Sunday Timeshighlighting the exceptional nature of a tennis player who escapes the tedious ping-pong that has taken over the present. So he twists his wrist and throws the drop shot, and the ball falls in slow motion on the soft grass, as if it were Wembley, still without bald spots on the backcourt. It’s all about trajectories, and the audience reacts with their mouths open when the sliced backhand traces a delicious diagonal from top to bottom, lightning-fast.
Alcaraz’s tennis has those very pictorial touches and also something scientific; the weightlessness, those elastic foreshortenings in the rest in which he contorts his trunk as if it were made of rubber, or the vertiginous rotating journey of the ball when he applies the lever like a whip. At full throttle, when he wants. Lajal’s family comes from the world of motor racing and the Estonian, he said these days, admires Verstappen’s voracity and the vertigo of Formula 1, so he continues to enjoy it even though when it comes down to it, the Murcian denies him, those two 0-40s are of no use because he achieves little. The Estonian does not let himself down, which is no small thing. He is here to savour it and the public appreciates the courage, the insistence and the going for the clash, without complexes. With his neck and temples almost at zero, a crown of dreadlocks like a reindeer’s antlers, he leaves to a standing ovation and Alcaraz – against Aleksandar Vukic (69th) in the second station; 6-7(9), 6-4, 6-4, 3-6 and 7-6(8) for the Australian against Sebastian Ofner – joins in the applause because tennis is nothing more than a mere game and, as his manifesto says, nothing makes much sense if there is not some fun involved.
IN THE FACE OF NERVES, BREATHING
AC | London
Alcaraz returned to La Catedral and the tingling in his stomach, positive because he had the honour of opening this year’s competition for the title won last year, was there.
“It’s something I hope will go away, but I think having those nerves is good if you control them when things aren’t going so well. At the time, Roger (Federer), Rafa (Nadal) and Novak (Djokovic) felt that when they went to the Central Court, and they controlled them,” said the player from El Palmar.
In this regard, the tennis player commented that he follows a specific routine before going out on the court “so as not to think so much about the match.” “The day before,” he said, “you have that thought, but we try to disconnect, do other things, be with my team and with my close people who are here; play golf, for example.”
He also follows a series of breathing techniques “to try to focus on things other than the game until the moment he has to concentrate, 45 minutes or an hour before.” And once he gets down to it, he says, he sets the bar very high.
“I always like to be perfect or to strive for perfection, to be as close to perfection as possible. There are certain things that I need to improve, in which I haven’t seen myself completely well, but overall, I have seen myself at a good level, playing and moving well. For a first round, which is never easy to start, I have been good,” he said.
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