Carlos Alcaraz assaults the NextGen ATP Finals

This Tuesday in Milan there is a tennis come-out to which you are invited Carlos Alcaraz, the great sensation of the year, who is facing (not before 15:30, #Come on) to the Danish Holger Vitus Nodskov Rune in the fourth edition of the NextGen ATP Finals. An under-21 Masters that began in 2017 with the South Korean kicks off at the Allianz Cloud in the Italian city Shared as champion in the final against a tennis player who will sound more familiar to the fans, the Russian Rublev. The next year, the winner was the greek Tsitsipas and in 2019 an Italian, Sinner, triumphed. The last three are now part of the world top-10.

After a year of absence due to the pandemic, the tournament returns and Alcaraz is by ranking (32nd) the first seed and, therefore, top seed to win a trophy that Sinner, Felix Auger-Aliassime and Jenson Brooksby, who were classified but resigned, will not fight for. The first two compete this week at the 250 in Stockholm, where Pedro Martínez and Alejandro Davidovich also play, one of the two Spaniards who has participated so far in the NextGen Finals. The other is Jaume Munar. The man from Malaga fell in the group stage two years ago and the Spaniard was a semifinalist in 2018.

The opportunity now comes to Carlos, the award to one magnificent season in which you have won your first ATP tournament (Umag, on clay, has beaten three top-10s (Tsitsipas, Berrettini and Sinner), added victories in the four Grand Slams and climbed 109 places in the circuit standings. “I did not expect to come out of confinement with the high level at which I am playing now. I am very happy with everything that I am living, of all the experiences that I am experiencing as a player and as a person “, explains Alcaraz, who understands that to achieve this he has to make some sacrifices, as he tells in an interview granted to the Gazzeta dello Sport. “I miss the life of a teenager. I miss many of the experiences that my friends have but it is the life I have chosen and I like it. I miss my friends, but when I can be with them we play Play together and, above all, FIFA. “

A different Masters

The system is like that of the ATP Finals, two groups of four players, semifinals and final, but with groundbreaking rules and on a hard court without doubles corridors. “I really like the tournament and the surface,” says Carlos, who trained with hometown favorite Lorenzo Musetti. This Tuesday assaults the NextGen.