Alcaraz Dominates the Desert

a quick recap: the kid's pretty good

Carlos Alcaraz defeated Daniil Medvedev 6/3 6/2 to claim his third Masters 1000 title and return to world number 1 in the ATP rankings. Alcaraz now owns 8 titles—the second most ever by a teenager (Nadal won 16 titles before turning 20).

Before the match I tweeted my usual thoughts on what I thought would be the keys for each player:

Underrated backhand. Full turn, slight drop, great spacing between the left elbow and body on contact. Unique to Medvedev is his double trigger-grip setup in both hands.

The first rally of the match featured many of the points I raised: Medvedev’s outrageously deep return position; the importance of the backhand crosscourt pattern for Medvedev; and the subsequent ability of Alcaraz to go backhand line so that he could find more forehand patterns.

The first return of the match…This return position is unique to Medvedev in tennis (maybe Nadal on clay reaches such corners). Medvedev has to strike this pretty hard and flat crosscourt to make it effective—and he usually does—but Alcaraz executed so many options—forehand line and crosscourt back behind a recovering Medvedev / the drop shot / the serve and volley—that it just turned into a clinic.

Alcaraz’s Ad-court tactic of standing wide and using the kick serve meant he stretched the Russian into—quite frankly—ridiculous court positions that made winning return points very difficult. When you hit flat from this deep—as Medvedev does—it’s very hard to be effective on a slow hard court against a guy with so many tools on the belt.

To make matters worse, Alcaraz came out timing the ball beautifully from the start. He absolutely tagged his first return of the match and then skipped around an inside-out forehand for a 94mph winner.

His forehand quality from inside the baseline is on par with Federer and Nadal.

Medvedev threw in a double fault and a tame backhand miss in the net in his opening service game. He was flat, and Alcaraz seized the break on his first opportunity. Again in this break point below, you can see the tactics of both play out: Medvedev is content to trade backhands, Alcaraz wants a forehand, so he takes the backhand up the line, but Medvedev doesn’t want to trade forehands, so he goes forehand line to Alcaraz’s backhand to establish that pattern again, but Carlos doesn’t hesitate, stepping in and punching a backhand winner cross court. It’s that instinctive aggression on big points that makes him so chaotic. On other days he misses that ball and it’s a smart play from Medvedev, but when he’s on you kind of have to go along with the show and just appreciate you’re watching someone special.

Part I

Alcaraz was content to take the ball high and slow/risk-off when going backhand crosscourt, until he felt he could take the backhand up the line to create a forehand pattern.

Part II

Medvedev doesn’t want to trade forehands. He takes his second forehand down the line, but it’s to the middle, and Alcaraz doesn’t think twice. He just cracks it for a winner.

Before the match I also pointed out that the Alcaraz drop shot would have to be great off the return:

Thread_of_Order @ThreadOrder

Additionally, given how deep Meddy stands on return I see two things for CA: 1) He can S&V more. 2) It restricts his drop shot on the +1 ball: when Meddy starts so deep his recovery to the middle after the return is across and FORWARD; momentum helps him track down drop shots.

Unlike Sinner yesterday, who at times tried to take the return early and then have to move backward as he recovered to the middle, one advantage of the deep return position is that you have momentum carrying you forward when recovering. The Alcaraz drop shot had to be great to be effective, and most of the time he played it to perfection

You can see that Daniil reacts and moves forward well to this because he’s already recovering forward from his ultra-deep return stance. Alcaraz would pick this flick defensive backhand up the line and win the point.

And on serve-volley points Alcaraz had an acute sense of his opponent’s position, feathering this one short with a degree of control Rod Laver would be proud of (and who was attending the match).

The slow court coupled with Medvedev’s relatively benign rally ball meant the whole suite of Alcaraz tricks was on the menu. In previous rounds, Sinner and Auger-Aliassime had rushed him through sheer power. Those matches were more reactive; shots were fired wildly through the thin desert air in a bid to get on top of rallies. The patience Alcaraz displayed in this final hint to his acute sense of tennis IQ, and reminded everyone (or me, at least, after my semi-final analysis) that he isn’t just mindlessly slashing at balls like a butcher; the man is a surgeon. Speaking of players with surgical precision in attack, check out the similarity in forehand prep between a ~2006 Federer and Alcaraz. Scalpels slightly inverted, tip up, with the wrist extended to present the strings to the photo gallery courtside.¹

I’ll try and find a Federer clip to add here for comparison at some point.

And along with some of the best footwork and speed in the game, Alcaraz was peppering balls inside the forecourt right after the return. The below graphic was taken after the first set.

There was nothing Medvedev could do to either hurt Alcaraz on offense or present a defensive problem for him. As a result, the Russian was limited to 5 winners for the match:

I could add a handful of other forehands/backhands/volleys to this review, but I think you get the point. At his best, Alcaraz is already one of the most complete players the game has ever seen. His serve is touching the high 130s, his forehand is one of the best in the game, his backhand is a reliable shield that he can also attack with, and his intangibles—the drop shot, slice, volleys, and court awareness—are the best in the game as a package. Oh and he’s quick as shit. With a great attitude.

As Federer always said, there will be new stars to carry the torch in the post-Big-3 era, and Alcaraz has arrived right on cue in the last 18 months.

The tour lands in Miami this week for the second leg of the Sunshine Double. Alcaraz is the defending champion, and unfortunately for tennis, Djokovic is still absent due to vaccine requirements. It means a match between the two best players in the world will have to wait until the clay season.

I’ll be back after Miami with some match analyses and thoughts. Always happy to answer questions in the comments, and as always, please share this article or newsletter more broadly if you think someone else might like it.

1. From here Alcaraz usually lifts his elbow higher to further invert the racquet tip to generate more speed, but when he’s a little rushed it’s remarkably similar to Rog. The slight difference in racquet angle—where Alcaraz’s strings a pointing a little higher—are due to an eastern (Federer) v semi-western (Alcaraz) forehand grip.