Murcia, Feb 4 (EFE) .- Five victories out of five games in 2021 for Carlos Alcaraz Garfia, the young Spaniard who has become the sensation of world tennis, and that after a 2020 in which he signed 83.3% of victories in ATP Challengers tournaments with titles in Trieste (Italy), Barcelona and Alicante and in which he debuted in a final phase of the ATP World Tour circuit in Rio de Janeiro. All this after two quarantines over which it happens as if nothing.
Alcaraz, who already makes headlines on national front pages and appears in the sports section of the news, is on his way to doing something great and what his rivals say about him is an unequivocal sign of what this Murcian, who is still 17 years old, can achieve to get.
“He just killed me, he did not let me play. I can say that he is very good and hits the ball in an incredible way,” said his latest victim, the Belgian David Goffin, a world number 14 and who, at 30, is He was overwhelmed by El Palmar at the Great Ocean Road Open, in Melbourne, with a double 6-3 in just 1 hour and 12 minutes.
This unappealable triumph of “La Roca” comes just before it became known that he may have to wait to give it continuity and that is that a positive for coronavirus detected in an employee of the hotel where Alcaraz is staying, endangers the dispute of the tournaments scheduled for this month in Australia, including this ATP 250, the ATP Cup played by Spain as a national team and also the Grand Slam. In principle, up to 600 people, including many tennis players, will be isolated and subjected to anti-covid tests this Thursday, which puts the tennis day on hold.
Juan Carlos Ferrero’s ward, despite being a teenager, shows improper maturity. After spending two weeks locked up in the hotel room where he is staying in the Antipodes, alone and almost 20,000 kilometers from home, the normal thing would be to think that he would accuse inactivity, but nothing could be further from reality.
On his return to the slopes after the forced confinement of five months last year, he already showed that he is hungry and his voracity is also evident now.
He started 2021 by winning in Doha, capital of Qatar, the three matches of the qualifying phase of the Australian Open against Slovak Filip Horansky (5-7, 6-1 and 6-4), Russian Evgeni Karlovwkiy (7-6 (1 ) and 7-6 (4)) and Bolivian Hugo Dellien Velasco (6-2 and 6-3) to stand in the final draw of his first Grand Slam, the Australian Open, which will take place, if the pandemic allows it from 8 to 21 of this month of February.
Already in the oceanic country he continues with his progression and, after beating Hungarian Attila Balazs in the first round of the tournament for which he registered and which is played at Melbourne Park, he continues to advance.
Balazs beat him because he retired injured when the result was 2-2 in the first set, but what was done against Goffin are already big words since the Liege started as number 1 of the tournament and we must not forget that it is a tennis player who throughout his career has won the “Big Three”, the one formed by Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and Novak Djkovic. That said, major words.
He has had that determination shown by El Palmar since he was a child – he used to win national championships in the children’s category as a cadet and in the cadet as a child – and his ambition seems to have no limit.
“I want to be number 1 in the world, like Nadal,” he said already in the summer of 2018, citing the one who is his idol and when he was just 15 years old and was already the U-16 European champion and months before winning the Junior Davis Cup with Spain.
Even previously, at the age of 14, it was already anticipated what could happen with today’s number 146 in the world, a ranking that today is anecdotal for what it can be.
“He is going for absolute crack. Then, time, luck and his own progression will tell how far he is capable of going, but there is no doubt that Carlos Alcaraz Garfia is one of those young people chosen to dominate his sport and we have him in Murcia” , was published in a report about him included in the Sports Report of the Region of 2017.
Alcaraz, who will turn 18 on May 5, must still feel like a child in a man’s world, but others are beginning to stop seeing him as such.
The results and his behavior on the track and also off it have made him come of age much earlier than his ID reflects. EFE
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