Carlos Alcaraz’s meteoric rise in 2022 has understandably ignited tennis passions, but he’s not Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic 2.0. At least not yet.
Carlos Alcaraz is an exciting tennis player. There is no doubt about it. The Spanish teenager is brimming with potential. He’s fast and agile. He has proven to be a fearless competitor, and there is that enviable, tantalizing return game. There are slam titles in his probably not-too-distant future.
This 19-year-old Spaniard has accomplished in a few months what nobody else has since 2004; he has supplied an actual face to the future of men’s tennis that isn’t Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, or Roger Federer’s. Except for Nadal’s countless injuries and the occasional Djokovic mental walkabout when he seems to forget how to play tennis, there hasn’t truly been a moment when the tennis community has collectively announced, “This is it! A changing of the guard!” and believed it.
Until now.
But (you knew there had to be a “but” in there, right?), we’ve quite gotten ahead of ourselves. You want to call Carlitos Alcaraz exciting? You betcha! Count me in. And as much as I’ve been a proponent for enjoying the never-seen-before-and-never-will-again collective dominance of the Big Three while we still can, I’ll even stipulate that men’s tennis has needed Carlos Alcaraz or a player like him for a while.
The onslaught of Alcaraz hype this week, though? It’s flat-out absurd.
First, there’s this from TennisTV, the subscription streaming service of the ATP:
And Babolat, the manufacturer that has supplied Nadal with rackets since he burst onto the scene in 2004:
And perhaps most egregious of all, this quote from Martina Navratilova:
No. I’m sorry. Just…no. After a couple of months of winning, I’m supposed to just…what? Admit that Carlitos Alcaraz is:
- A Federer/Nadal/Djokovic version 2.0
- The new King of Clay
- An UPGRADED version of Novak Djokovic
He might be those things one day. I’ve been a tennis fan long enough to remember Pete Sampras in his heyday and when Federer broke his record of 14 slam titles back in 2009. In the 90s and early naughts, 14 was thought to be untouchable. We know now that each of the Big Three shattered it…and Djokovic and Nadal have the DOUBLE career Grand Slam.
So…yeah. Nothing is impossible. But come on, now.
Forget the fact that the dude has zero slam titles, because I have no doubt that he will rectify that in short order. Forget that Nadal — playing with a broken rib — beat him just a month and a half ago. What this week’s hyperbolic nonsense demonstrates is a laughable example of recency bias (placing more importance on recent rather than historical events) coupled with the scarcity of legitimate heirs apparent in men’s tennis.
We’ve forgotten just how extraordinary the Big Three are because they made what they’ve done seem normal. Nadal has been in the top 10 for 17 years. SEVENTEEN years. Djokovic was a single win away from a calendar-year Grand Slam in 2021. That’s not normal. I can’t stress enough just how not normal those things are. But we’ve watched them do it for so long, the narrative has become “well OF COURSE they’re still winning. Because that’s what they do.”
I don’t know what Alcaraz’s legacy will be, but I can assure you this: his place in tennis will not be singularly decided by the fact that he has a “better ball out wide” than Djokovic does. The quality of a player’s strokes alone are only part of the equation.
His legacy will be tangled with his tenacity, his ability to evolve, his resolve, and his susceptibility to injury. It will be about his movement, his resilience, his determination (or lack thereof) to keep going when he’s suffering mentally, emotionally, and physically.
It’ll be down to the quality of his opponents and his eventual ability to handle worldwide fame. Oh — and consistency. These things are nothing less than Nadal, Djokovic, and Federer have brought to the table for the last 18 years, and they will be required of any player looking to surpass them.
Is Carlos Alcaraz that player? I have no idea; nor does anyone else. It’s possible nobody is and never will be. So let’s at least try for a dash of perspective with our large helping of enthusiasm.
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