• US Open Carlos Alcaraz's shoes are auctioned and fly to New York

  • David Ferrer "Now, from my new position, the most difficult thing is to say no"

The tennis player of the year, by absolute unanimity, did not even need to complete the calendar.

An abdominal injury during the Paris-Bercy quarterfinals forced him to retire against

Holger Rune

and put an end to his extraordinary season.

The second youngest winner of the United States Open in the professional era, champion of two Masters 1000 (Miami and Madrid) and two ATP 500 (Rio and Barcelona), and the earliest to rise to number 1 in the world would cause loss in the ATP Finals and the Davis Cup Finals, the latter tournament that he could not play in 2021 either, then due to the positive for covid.

Such was the brilliance of Carlos Alcaraz that, even from the side of the road, completing his six weeks of convalescence, he took over the stage in Turin, during the tournament that brings together the eight best of the year, where he went to be invested as the first of the class.

Neither

Rafael Nadal

nor

Stefanos Tsitsipas

Eliminated in the group stage, they managed to balance the equation that could allow them to evict him from the attic.

Although in 2021 he had already left enough indications to count on him for the greatest achievements in the recently concluded course, not even in his own environment was a similar explosion being considered.

Yes, Alcaraz had won his first title in Umag, knocked out Tsitsipas in the third round of the US Open and won, with the cap, the NextGen ATP Finals, but, in strictly qualitative terms, he was still 32nd in the ranking. , a more than promising racket, but whose true impact was yet to be determined.

He arrived on the US hard court tour in the spring with his first ATP 500, won in Rio.

In Indian Wells, he demanded a cracked rib from Nadal to knock him down in the semifinals, after a match that had nothing to do with the one played a year earlier at the Mutua Madrid Open, the one in which the left-hander won against an opponent still with obvious signs of acne.

In the Californian desert, Alcaraz sent everything, in the preamble to the victory in the Masters 1000 in Miami, where he defeated

Casper Ruud

in the final .

Stronger after six weeks of preseason in which he did specific work

alongside Alberto Lledó

,

Juanjo Moreno

and

Sergio Hernández

, the three professionals responsible for sculpting the resounding figure with which he was seen at the Australian Open, where

Matteo Berrettini

neutralized him in the third round, not without fighting until the tiebreaker of the fifth set, Alcaraz was traveling in a rocket.

the spring feast

A minimal shock in the transition to clay, with an early defeat in Monte Carlo against

Sebastian Korda

, gave way to another feast: champion of the Count of Godó, after facing two match points in the semifinals against

Alex de Miñaur

, and at the Mutua Madrid Open, leaving behind three exquisite corpses:

Nadal

,

Novak Djokovic

and

Alexander Zverev

.

The victory in Barcelona meant his entry into the top 10, but even the defeats offered a fruitful reading.

After losing to

Lorenzo Musetti

in the final of the ATP 500 in Hamburg, he appeared in the top 5, being the second youngest tennis player of this millennium to do so, next to Nadal.

The best was yet to come.

His performance at Roland Garros (fourth against

Zverev

) and Wimbledon (eighth against

Jannik Sinner

) was within logic.

Even the subsequent lost finals, because in addition to Hamburg he was left without the title in Umag (again Sinner).

He also wouldn't stick his head out too far in Montreal (

Tommy Paul

, starter) and Cincinnati (

Cameron Norrie

, quarterfinals).

Flushing Meadows, the venue that had seen him knock down Tsitsipas, then number three in the ranking a year earlier, was the scene of his impressive growth spurt.

Three matches of five sets,

Marin Cilic

in the round of 16, Sinner in the quarterfinals and

Frances Tiafoe

in the semifinals, before reaching port by beating

Casper Ruud

by four in the final.

The match against Sinner, with a

match point

saved in between, deserved the consideration of the ATP as the best of 2022.

In the year of

Roger Federer

's retirement , which darkened the face of a good part of the fans, the irruption of Alcaraz has transcended the boundaries of tennis.

The leader of a new time, also at the head of a generation that threatens to leave the one that preceded him in suspense, has entered more than 10 million dollars in prizes and six million from sponsoring firms, including Rolex. , Nike, Babolat, BMW and Isdin.

The irrepressible push of his youth is accompanied by a renewing spirit.

He does not lack power or vigor in his game, in the heat of tennis that prevails, but he also has imagination and commitment to the show.

Nobody proposes like him, bold and precise with the left, nor does he leave a similar trace of joviality and sympathy.

Well surrounded, with

Juan Carlos Ferrero

in command of operations, he manages all the arguments to mark an era.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • tennis

  • Carlos Alcaraz

  • Novak Djokovic

  • Rafael Nadal