Alcaraz saves a match point to come back against Ramos

Everyone sees Carlos Alcaraz as one of the four favorites to win the trophy this year at Roland Garros, along with Djokovic, Nadal and Tsitsipas. There are plenty of arguments to understand it this way. He is the leader of the year in titles (4) and has 30 wins, two of them against legends already mentioned (the Serbian and the Balearic). But in tennis, anything can happen, especially when there are players of such quality on the court. And Albert Ramos is very good on clay, the surface on which he has won his four titles (the last four months ago in Córdoba) and played another six finalsin which he competes more than many of his opponents, because he usually participates in the South American tour at the beginning of the year. That gives him a different point of view when it comes to the big tournaments of the clay campaign, because he is already prepared. And at 34, he showed it to ‘humanize’ the 19-year-old from Murcia with a fantastic performance in a vibrant game by the flirtatious Simonne Mathieu, which still ended with a victory for Alcaraz 6-1, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (2) and 6-4 in 4h34. On Friday He will face American Sebastian Korda in the third round., viejo known, who eliminated him not long ago in Monte Carlo.

“He even beats me in training,” Ramos told AS in an interview last year in Marbella. He wanted to take revenge for the two defeats that Alcaraz had foisted on him at two important moments in his career. The first in Rio two years ago, in the boy’s first ATP match, a duel that lasted 3h37 and was resolved in the third set. And the second in 2021, in Umag on the way to Carlitos’ first title. It would have been a meritorious revenge, because the evolution of the prodigy of El Palmar since then has been astonishing. He is a much better tennis player now than in those victories, which speaks highly of the Catalan, despite the fact that Carlitos’ 74 unforced errors influenced the equality that prevailed (“Think about the points”, he was heard shouting). Because so was Ramos’ lefty drive, sometimes with a lot of revolutions, spin and angle, other times flatter. In any case, he handles it very well, and when he lines up to go in with it, he is very dangerous. Experience counts and Albert has more than enough. That’s why he threw himself into a match that was uphill from the start and didn’t fall apart when he missed a match point in the fourth set at 5-4 and served, and then gave up in the tiebreaker after having saved three set points. There it was seen that Alcaraz knows how to suffer like a champion.

“In the fifth set I was fresh, running for every ball like at the beginning of the match,” he said.. It was the fifth time he had played one, and he had won three, all in 2021 (at Wimbledon, against Uchiyama, and at the US Open, against Tsitsipas and Gojowczyk). Everything pointed to the fact that he would be successful again and easily, because he was euphoric, in full comeback. And Ramos had to fight for more than four hours to beat Australia’s Kokkinakis in the first round. But he was not daunted, he physically endured and with a break he put himself up 3-0. His open serves from the advantage side choked Charly. The worried face of his coach, Ferrero, contrasted with the hopeful face of José Luis Díaz, Albert’s, in the midst of a tension that could be cut with a knife.

excellent ending

And in these, Alcaraz embroidered the point of the game. He hit a crosscourt volley after a long exchange and put the ball into the court with a fine one-handed backhand on the run. Thus he recovered the disadvantage and took the lead with another break before losing his serve again. More emotion and alternatives, impossible. Then, another break from Carlos, this time after returning two shots and driving the respectable and Ramos crazy, who threw his racket. “I feel like I play at home, it’s amazing. It would not be possible to win this game without the support of this public,” he said. It was his turn to close the victory and he did it with a blank game, without his pulse trembling against an opponent, now yes, broken, who had to bow before the force of nature that is here and has turned upside down the the status quo of world tennis.