The young Murcian tennis player Carlos Alcaraz Garfia will start the 2021 season this Sunday facing the Slovakian Filip Horansky in his debut in the qualifying phase of the Australian Open, first Grand Slam tournament of the year that will start in Doha, the capital of Qatar, where 16 places will be at stake to be in the final draw that will already be held from February 8 to 21 in Melbourne.
The player from El Palmar, 17 years old and number 141 in the world, will face this qualification being the seed number 21 and will have to pass three rounds to achieve his goal, the same one that 127 other tennis players are pursuing.
Alcaraz and Horansky, 28 years old and number 184 in the classification of the Association of Professional Tennis Players (ATP), maintain an interesting rivalry after the clashes that elucidated last October. The Murcian agreed to the semifinals of the Sánchez-Casal Leotron Catalonia tournament, the first event of the National ATP Challenger Circuit held in Barcelona and ended up winning, by beating the Piestany player in three sets with partials of 7-5, 4-6 and 6-4 after 2 hours and 11 minutes. In this way he took revenge against the rival who had surpassed him eight days before in the Biella tournament, in Italy, then by 3-6 and 4-6 in 1 hour and 15 minutes.
The other Spaniards in contention in this previous phase of the Australian Open are the Valencians Bernabé Zapata and Carlos Taberner, who will face the Ukrainian Sergiy Stakhovsky and the Italian Roberto Marcora, respectively; Girona's Tommy Robredo, who will face Frenchman Antoine Hoang; Mario Vilella from Elche, whose rival will be the Italian Alessandro Gianessi; and Guillermo García López, from Albacete, who will have as his opponent the Argentine Francisco Cerundolo.
In the women's preview, Bucsa will face the American Vickery; Georgina García, with the Russian Zakharova; Eva Guerrero, with the French Burel; Parrizas-Díaz, with the Japanese Muramatsu and Arruabarrena, with the Romanian Buzarnescu.