Carlos Alcaraz Just Made HISTORY! (Again!)

if I want to be you know one of the best players in the world I have to be a good player in in every surface Carlos alcarez just became the youngest man in history to win a grand slam title on all three surfaces doing so at 21 years old not even Federer Nadal or jokovic can boast of what alcaraz has done at this age on top of that caritos has now drawn level in the Grand Slam tally with these Legends and while we already know that alcaraz's trajectory is by no means ordinary his rolling Go's title win over Alexander Z verev left everyone speechless for different reasons here's the full breakdown of alcaraz's French Open title run my tactical analysis the controversies and everything in between there were doubts about Carlos's French Open campaign following the forearm injury he'd been struggling with for most of the clay season and although many still considered him a favorite for the title we all knew that it wasn't going to come easily the tournament was wide open with all of cner Novak alcaraz Sasha Zev even Casper Roode all having a realistic shot at the title after steamrolling JJ wolf in the first round things were starting to look up until alcarez began to struggle against some consistent depth from Jesper D young in the second [Applause] round alcarez made 47 unforced errors but got through that match in four sets after recovering from a breakdown in the fourth to put the match to bed Seb Corda then put up some some fight against caritos in the third round but caritos still came through in straight sets in what I thought was an impressive win compared to his previous matches by the fourth round Carlos was already flexing his muscles on Felix Al Ali aim beating the Canadian in straight sets to reach the quarterfinals alcarez then faced cipas in the quarterfinal and while he'd beaten the Greek in all five of their previous encounters some of us thought that cipas could push alcaraz a little bit more this time but alcaraz ended up being the one pushing tias from corner to corner early on alcaras took the first set before edging Steph out in a second set tie Break by the time the third set came we had already seen the mental aspect of the matchup taking a toll on C pass and here's how Carlos closed out the match after 2 hours and 15 minutes second last the match was weird because you would expect C to rely on his serve and forehand more than anything else but guess who was getting more out of his serves and even winning the shorter rallies have a look at this stat csas found problems with alcaraz's kick serves to his backhand and was also missing a lot of neutral backhands as well after the match Steph made this hilarious comment about what it feels like to play against alcaraz I haven't felt like this on the court and uh I haven't felt against a lot of players like this on the court there was some Voodoo stuff going on today on the on the court like I wasn't able to just get the ball where I wanted at this point you start thinking to yourself that Carlos is maybe just a really bad matchup for Steph what does cyas need to do to flip the script or at the very least put up more fight because he doesn't just get exploited on the backhand he even has trouble executing his best shots against alcaraz now into the semis we got the matchup that we all wanted alcaraz versus CER and personally I wanted to see five sets now I had alcaraz getting the better of CER since he has that Edge over the Italian on the slower surfaces but boy was the match extremely nervy to say the least as a result it wasn't high quality compared to the level that we've gotten used to seeing from them being a grand slam semi-final though it was the biggest match in their rivalry but it felt just short of what it promised at least in my opinion alcaraz wasn't his usual self in the first set and cner didn't hesitate to punish him they then flipped rolls in the second set with s's level taking a dip allowing alcaraz back into the match or better put alcaraz simply raised his level it was almost like what we saw play out at Indian Wells CER only hit three winners in the second set by the time the third set came both players decided that it was time to switch rolles again CER began to cramp though and alcarez couldn't take advantage as CER raced to a two set to one lead I should also point out that alcaraz was also cramping in the third set and needed his good old pickle juice the fourth set came and for every question CER asked alcaras had an even better response I mean look at [Music] this another thing worth KN is that alcaraz's backhand was super solid and even bailed him out as he snatched the fourth set from center with this winner right here yeah the fifth set came and at this point we just saw Center fading not many of his first serves were going in and alarz continued to smother the Italian cers seemed to be running out of ideas on how to hurt alcaraz on offense at many points and in the end we saw a frustrated Center I noted a number of things that played out in the match I felt like the pressure of being the future of men's tennis got to both players a bit as they faced each other in their biggest matchup but alcarez handled it better alcarez is able to produce so many different shots from so many different locations on court which is something he does better than Center as we can see from the stats here alcarez had twice as many volleys lobs and Drop shots compared to yanic cner sometimes seems to struggle to find some Rhythm when alcaraz shows more variation in his game CER won more total points during the match but it was alcaraz who came up with nearly twice as many winners as Center oh and he was also winning the most important points after the match Carlos said that to survive such matches you need to find joy and suffering you have to find uh the joy suffering with Alexander's ver coming through against Casper Roode in the other semi the stage for the final was set these were the numbers for alcaraz and Sasha coming into the final in some ways it almost looked like an even matchup on paper but tennis isn't played on paper the final was a battle of attrition with Al as coming out swinging in the first set putting different heights on his ground strokes slicing the back hands and using his entire clay CT Arsenal in variety Carlos showed just how Dynamic a player he really is meanwhile Sasha was tight early on and struggling to find his range and Rhythm after breaking Sasha to love in the fifth game alcaraz seized the first set with this dominant display but in the second set alcaraz got dragged by Zev in those neutral rallies hitting harder didn't help much as Sasha began to find more Rhythm before we knew it the match was level at one set a piece the third set came and alcaraz's forehand began to break down we also saw him complain about the court conditions because of some of the bad bounces on parts of the Court where there wasn't as much clay he did serve for the set though but Sasha wrong-footed him with this beautiful passing shot to get back on serve Sasha then ended up winning four games in a row to take the third set and the German was now one set away from his first ever Grand Slam just like it was in 2020 alcaraz wasn't helping his case with 15 unforced errors in the third set alone watching the match I expected Sasha to become more aggressive in that fourth set rather than go back to his default setting with all the momentum on his side however it was alcaras who would break early on and dish out a bread stick to Z in the set how did one of the very best servers in the world someone averaging a 75% win percentage on his first serve only come up with a 46% win percentage on his first serve and a disastrous 22% win percentage on his second serve in the fourth set it was simply Beyond me Sasha's legs looked like they were starting to go away in that fourth set do I need to point out that there was also an exchange of words with his father and some argument with his team at the beginning of the set too I have no idea what was said but it looked like the wrongest time for that to happen but the biggest talking point of the match came in the fifth set when there was a controversial overrule from the Umpire alcarez had gotten an early break and found himself in a hole for context on the situation the line judge had called his second serve out when he was trying to hold at 1540 but the Umpire overruled the decision had the ball been called in zov would have been back on serve and that could have changed the dynamic of the deciding set that call seemed to take all the wind out of Sasha's sales and from then on there could be only one winner with alcaraz getting the W after 4 hours and 19 minutes I should note that Z improved his level in the fifth set but could only blame himself for not finishing the match earlier now before we talk about Sasha getting robbed in that game early in the fifth set let me point out a few things that I noticed in the final Zev would be pulling his hair out for not having that Killer Instinct when he needed it his volleys weren't decisive enough and that gave Carlos a chance to get to many balls we've never really known Sasha for his volleys anyway they are probably one of the uglier parts of his game here's one of those points in the fourth [Applause] set oh no he left it credit to caritos for his athleticism and speed but he had no business winning that point if Sasha was any bit clutch here's another instance right [Applause] here ZB was also missing way too many easy shots in the last set and at times it felt like he was dealing with the ghost from the 2020 US Open tactically speaking alcaraz made Sasha play more forehands dragging the German wide off the court to his weaker groundstroke Carlos then cleverly played back behind Sasha as he tried to recover back to the middle of the court for the next shot each player had 3002 forehands but alcarez had 19 winners compared to Sasha's five in my opinion this was mostly a byproduct of Carlos's strategy but Sasha could only manage 274 backhands so let's do the math alcarez was able to find the balance between being destructive and self-destructive on the forehand as he engaged Zev he limited the German's ability to redirect traffic to his much Superior backhand meanwhile Carlos was also bringing a lot of variety to the table to neutralize Vera's power especially off the backhand Wing that there was the difference here we can see alcaraz winning more of the longer rallies in addition to that alcaraz hit 20 Drop shots 10 more than Zev as he continued mixing up patterns not letting zif control rallies from the back of the court with his crosscourt backhand Sasha was also a measly six for 23 in breakpoint conversion opportunities against alcaraz while the Spaniard was 9 for6 a 27% conversion rate was never going to hold up against alcaraz who was over 50% himself in breakpoint conversions more so in a final where the stakes are so high that you definitely want to be more clutch on those pressure points we saw alcaraz playing a lot of moon balls against Sasha and while many people might find that to be an unpleasant sight it actually seemed effective against a player who struggles to generate Pace on his own likes Sasha the moon balling was also helping alcaras take the pace off of Z's serve thereby neutralizing his opponent to do any kind of serve plus one caritos then mixed up those High loopy returns with flattened shots when he needed to overall I was super impressed with Carlos completeness as a player but now to the elephant in the room without being biased I found the umpire's call really strange in what could have been a Carlos double fault and I'll tell you why the line judge called the ball out and we would later see that the ball was out by around 2 mm now we know that the Umpire doesn't need to listen to the line judge if he thinks a call is wrong so let's take that out of the way also we only saw the digital image from the Hawkeye system which allows around a 3mm margin of error because the Hawkeye technology is only a prediction of where the ball would have bounced so on the one hand it's possible that the Umpire might not have been wrong after all since it was such a close call but at the same time who would you rather trust when it comes to the tiniest of margins for a ball traveling so fast off a serve the naked human eye that saw the ball hit the ground from around 15 M away or Hawkeye the truth is is that regardless of the 2mm margin for error the Hawkeye calls should be the easy pick in such cases that being said Clay is the only surface where you can clearly see the ball marks on the ground and while umpires are right many times we've also seen them point out to completely different circles which only leads to trust issues for the players I know that the electronic system might not leave players 100% satisfied in the future but the truth is is that it's a big step forward at least in my my opinion so did Sasha get robbed well he might have been robbed of one game which would have had some impact on the match that one game could have changed the Dynamics of the final set but it's almost impossible to say to what extent that could have been at the same time it would have been nice to see Sasha become even more tenacious with the chips down and All Odds Against him because really those close calls are always going to be a thing in tennis and we can't do much about them at the end of the day we'll never know how significant a factor that call was in the deciding outcome of the match it doesn't matter if that set ended 6'2 no one can say for sure what would have happened so you can't say stuff like even if Sasha won that game it would have been 63 or 6'4 it just doesn't work that way at the same time no one should take anything away from what Carlos achieved at rolling garos simply put the guy is special he's now shown time and time again that he can win matches and even titles even when he's not playing at his best Carlos made this statement when he was 12 and now here he is at 21 living the dream alcarez is the youngest player ever to win three slams across three different surfaces not only is Carlos alarz the youngest to win Majors on all three surfaces he's even done it in the fewest appearances in men's singles putting daylight between him and the others it took alcaras 13 main draw appearances to achieve this for reference look at how long it took these other Legends to achieve the same thing also alcaraz is the first man to win a grand slam after winning the semi-final and the final in five sets since Roger Federer at the 2017 Australian Open Roger beat finka in the semis and Nadal in the final both five Setters so let me ask you this is alcaraz the new five set king after jokovic I think so because he's now 11 and one when the matches go to Five sets his only five set loss came against Mato bartini at the 2022 Australian Open if I'm not mistaken and now alcarez returns to world world number two leap frogging Novak jokovic in the rankings with CER now occupying the top spot this might be the new world order as the big three continue to lose their grip on tennis I found alcaraz's win particularly impressive because after that Wimbledon title last year Carlos seemed to hit a wall and began to fall off a title drought shocking losses and injuries had some fans beginning to ask questions seeing how far alcaras has come from failing to manage his nerves and cramping against the goat at Roland garos to winning Wimbledon recovering from a disappointing second half of 2023 and also from injuries earlier this year it's Crystal Clear that Carlos is a champion going forward I reckon that there will be less doubt about what he can do on the court and what he can achieve in his career the comparisons with the big three are going to continue no doubt I'd say that Carlos's win in Paris might be the ugliest compared to his other slam wins but it only adds another dimension to his greatness but what are your thoughts about Carlos alarz and his French Open title run do you see him defending his title at Wimbledon and how far do you see him going in his career be sure to let me know in the comments if you like this video you can keep up with all the action here on Courtside tennis by Smashing that subscribe button and if you missed out on our French Open Recaps no worries I've got them showing on the screen for you right here