• Carlos Alcaraz: A champion's arguments

Carlos Alcaraz, very inaccurate under the roof of the Palais Omnisports, fell to Roman Safiullin in the second round of the Paris Masters 1000, complicating his fight for world number one against Novak Djokovic. This is the first defeat of the season for Alcaraz in his first match of a tournament and with it he mortgages a good part of his chances of finishing the year at the top of the ranking. [Narration and statistics (6-3, 6-4)]

Alcaraz's last defeat in a Masters 1000 opener was in August 2022, when he lost to Tommy Paul in Montreal (6-3, 4-6, 6-3).

The match was full of inaccuracies on both sides, although the Russian almost always dictated the pace, aggressive with the serve, confident when the first ones came in, setting a rhythm to which Alcaraz joined uncomfortably, against the current, unable to break the cadence. Safiullin, a slow player, but with lethal claws, missed and got it right, who saw how the ball accompanied him just as in the first round against Alexandre Muller.

Alcaraz, with the Indian Wells and Madrid titles in the Masters 1000 field, has reached the end of the year and if last week he skipped the appointment with Basel due to physical problems, he arrived in the French capital warning that he did not feel one hundred percent.

Failure and no arguments

The latest results had already set off alarm bells and the worst omens were confirmed in a match that, on paper, they should have won, but in which they were not able to leave their mark. The Russian was playing the lottery and Alcaraz was barely able to respond to his volleys, failing and without arguments to trigger doubts in the opponent's field.

And that was despite the fact that he started by herding first in both sets, immediately breaking the serve of his opponent, who reacted in both cases quickly, recovered it immediately and returned the blow each time, leaving the Spaniard unable to react.

At the Masters 1,000 in Paris, Alcaraz begins to write the same black legend that haunted Rafa Nadal for years. In 2021 he left in tears after his defeat to Hugo Gaston, who managed to come back from 5-0 down to the exultation of a bewildered crowd. Last year, abdominal problems forced him to retire in the quarterfinals against eventual champion Holger Rune.

  • tennis
  • Carlos Alcaraz