Let’s start with a big qualifier: Carlos Alcaraz will probably be fine.
He is 20 years old. He has already won two Grand Slam titles, and neither of them have been on clay, which may be his best surface and is certainly the one he is most familiar with. At 19, he became the youngest man to reach the number one ranking.
Even his main rivals, including contemporaries such as Jannik Sinner, expect Alcaraz to be the best player of his era. He is going to win many tournaments, many of them Grand Slams. The thing is, he hasn’t won a tournament since he beat Novak Djokovic in five sets in the Wimbledon final eight months ago.
This is his longest period without an ATP Tour title since he began winning them in 2021.
And that’s, well, a little weird.
Remember those heady days after Wimbledon?
After coming back to beat Djokovic, the best grass player in the world, on Center Court, there was a feeling that he had snatched the torch from the hands of the Serbian champion, a player who had won more Grand Slam titles and almost everything else almost everyone. This was supposed to be the start of Alcaraz winning almost everything for a long time.
Alcaraz celebrates with the Wimbledon trophy last year (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
That could still happen. It just hasn’t happened yet.
He has a respectable 24-11 record since winning Wimbledon. Furthermore, Sinner won his first title at the Australian Open in January, took two weeks off and then went to Rotterdam and won another title. He is undefeated this year and hasn’t lost a match since mid-November. Both will begin play at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California, the so-called “fifth major,” later this week.
“I have to improve a lot of things on and off the court as well,” Alcaraz said at the beginning of the year.
He regretted his drops in concentration in the middle of the games. He hasn’t been able to explain the nights when he struggles to find the court with his usually lethal groundstrokes. He said that when he occasionally practices with Djokovic, he studies how he concentrates, aspiring to one day be able to approach every match and every practice session with the intensity of the man who has set the standard for the sport over the past decade and surpassed them both. players, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, once considered untouchable.
Like every player, Alcaraz knows that his weaknesses, such as they are, are a mystical combination of the physical, the technical and the mental.
Alcaraz has resisted being too specific about what he needs to do to improve, leaving it up to everyone else to find the answer to a question that seems a little silly given that he has already won $27.5 million in prize money and tens of millions more. in sponsorships. He is 71-15 since the beginning of 2023.
But here goes anyway: wWhat’s wrong with King Charles?
The short answer is not too much, except when it is a lot.
Djokovic, Sinner, Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Zverev, four of the greatest living players, are responsible for six of Alcaraz’s 11 losses since July, including his withdrawal with an ankle injury in Rio in February. There’s not much shame in that, except that he had been beating everyone on that list except Djokovic quite comfortably last year.
Alcaraz withdrew due to injury in Rio (Buda Mendes/Getty Images)
To find out what, if anything, has changed regarding the version of Alcaraz that won 11 tournaments in 17 months during 2022 and 2023, we enlisted the help of the wizards at TennisViz and Tennis Data Innovations, which collect ball and player tracking data with high-speed cameras and analyze it in real time to understand the effectiveness of each shot.
The numbers show that Alcaraz has barely become a shadow of his former self since Wimbledon, compared to an aggregate measure of his game over the past year, but he has fallen enough to become more vulnerable. This is especially true against the best of the best, when the slightest drop can result in a loss.
However, his falls have been dramatic in four surprising defeats since last summer, to Nicolas Jarry and Roman Safiullin, and less surprising ones to Grigor Dimitrov and Tommy Paul (who has been a sneakily difficult matchup for Alcaraz).
Tom Corrie, a former coach who is head of performance at Tennis Viz and who has spent more time than most studying Alcaraz, has a theory on the matter, which implies that the Spaniard is almost too talented for his own good.
“The guy has endless tactical options,” Corrie said. “He is incredibly skilled, he hits with a lot of power, but sometimes he does not play with a tactical framework as defined as that of other players. For this reason, he misses games and plays at a poor level. When he falls, he falls pretty big.”
It is also worth noting that men’s tennis is very developed at the moment. Even the second half of the top 100 has important quality. Have fun with a first round matchup against Tomas Machac (No. 63) of the Czech Republic. Gifts may be few and far between. Alcaraz’s opponents, who are almost always extra motivated, should get some credit for making him play badly.
Even so, some important numbers from Alcaraz stand out.
One measure is how often Alcaraz is “on attack,” defined by Tennis Viz as when a player has received a low-quality incoming shot, has positive court position (above the court), or has a point of comfortable contact with the ball. (not in the final stretch). A player will be “on defense” if he has received a high-quality shot, has poor court position (especially deep or wide of the court) or is playing the ball in a straight line.
The circuit average for shots taken on offense is 25 percent. On average, Alcaraz is on the attack 24 percent of the time, but since Wimbledon, that figure has fallen to 22 percent. It may not seem like much, but tennis is a game of small margins. A few points can make a big difference and are harder to win by defending.
(Marcelo Endelli/Getty Images)
The other numbers that show relatively dramatic changes are the effectiveness of his return of serve, his forehand and his backhand. High-speed cameras and computers generate a score for each of those shots based on their speed and location—extra credit for painting the lines or getting too close too often.
On average over the past year, Alcaraz was near the top in each of those categories.
On a scale of one to 10, Alcaraz’s return of serve averaged a 7.6, one point better than the circuit average and fifth place overall. Since Wimbledon, his return rating has fallen to 7.0, still better than most, but just 13th overall.
Her backhand, an 8.0 on average last year, good for sixth overall, has fallen to 7.6 since Wimbledon, ranked 15th. And her deadly forehand, the shot that makes people shudder players, has had one of the most dramatic falls, from 8.8 to 8.1, going from second best to 15th.
Alcaraz essentially magnified these tendencies during surprising losses to Paul, Dimitrov, Safiullin and Jarry.
Against Paul at the National Bank Open in Canada in August, he was on the attack for only 19 percent of the match. Against Dimitrov in Shanghai and Jarry in Buenos Aires, the attack rate was only 20 percent.
That might not be a problem if Alcaraz had continued doing what has made him a fan favorite: his ability to magically win a point from a defensive position when all seems lost and unleash a ridiculous forehand along the line. line. run. That’s known as the “score steal” of him.
His steals score has averaged 37 percent since the Wimbledon title, but in those four surprising losses, it was 30 percent. Playing more defensively and less miraculously practically guarantees a loss. He added poor execution on the most basic shots and there was no way Alcaraz was going to win those matches.
His forehand quality was 7.3 against Paul and 6.8 against Jarry, both well below the tour average. The same goes for his setback against Jarry and Safiullin.
His performance against Jarry was not only below his standards, but far below the standards of professional tennis. As you can see in the two graphs below, his numbers were below the tour averages in 10 statistical categories, from the speed of his forehand to the percentage of points won when the rally lasted more than eight shots.
Against Safiullin, he converted only 50 percent of the points when he had established control and was on the attack. The tour average is 66 percent.
The effect of all this can be surprising to look at. Since Alcaraz has earned a reputation for being spectacular, the bad performances seem terrible.
“When things go wrong, they go really wrong,” Corrie said. “If you beat Medvedev, he will continue to put thousands of balls on the court. He is not fading as aggressively as Carlos does.”
(Top photo: Marcelo Endelli/Getty Images)
