Carlos Alcaraz stalks the Top-100 of the ATP ranking with 17 years

Carlos Alcaraz continues to achieve success at 17 years old on the ATP Challenge Tour circuit. This Sunday the Murcian tennis player won the final of the Challenger Alicante-Equelite Pedro Martínez, also Spanish, in a very special tournament for him since he played at 'home'. And it is that Alcaraz trains on the tracks of the Equelite-Ferrero Academy in Alicante under the supervision of Juan Carlos Ferrero.

With his victory in the Challenger Alicante-Equelite, Alcaraz makes a big leap this week in the ATP rankings, where he climbs 22 positions to rank 136 with 464 points, being the best tennis player on the circuit aged 17 years or less and only surpassed by Italians Lorenzo Musetti (18 years old, 123rd in the ranking with 507 points) and Jannik Sinner (19 years old, 46th in the ranking and 1,136 points) among the players in the ranking with less than 20 years. It should be remembered that Alcaraz started the 2020 season in position 490 in the standings with just 60 points.

Carlos Alcaraz's 2020 season is for framing. In the month of January the Murcian won the two ITF tournaments played in Manacor and in February, at only 16 years old, he made his debut in an official match on the ATP Tour at the Rio de Janeiro Tournament, achieving victory against fellow Spaniard Albert Ramos and approaching the precocity record of another legend such as Rafa Nadal, who won his first match on the ATP Tour at the age of 15 in 2002.

The stoppage of the circuit due to the coronavirus pandemic made Alcaraz's progression stop and it was difficult for the Murcian to start again after falling in the first round of the Todi Challenger. However, a week later the Murcian gave an entire exhibition at the Trieste Challenger, where he took the title and beat rivals such as Lorenzo Musetti. Alcaraz later reached the final at the Cordenons Challenger, where he lost to Bernabé Zapata, and in the Biella tournament he lost to Filip Horansky in the round of 16.

One of the big disappointments this year for the Murcian was his premature defeat in the first qualifying round at Roland Garros. Alcaraz faced the Australian Aleksandar Vukic, who won the first set 6-4 and against whom he had two match points that he failed to take advantage of to end up giving up the match.

However, Alcaraz managed to recover from this defeat with the conquest of the Challenger Sánchez-Casal de Barcelona beating Damir Dzumhur in the final and, last week, with the title in the Challenger Alicante-Equelite, where he added his second victory against a Top-100 after beating Pedro Martínez in the end. Alcaraz wants to continue climbing positions in the ATP ranking to seek access to the great events of the ATP Tour through previous rounds … and even enter the final draw of a Grand Slam directly if he continues with this progression.