Carlos Alcaraz gets a lot of people trying to tell him to pace himself a bit and stop being so overly aggressive. Doing so, say his would-be coaches, will allow him to be more consistent throughout the season, be better late in the year, and not at times beat himself in important matches. But Alcaraz appears to be the kind of player at 20 years old who isn’t quite ready to stop being himself.
Plus, according to former ten ten player Tim Henman, Alcaraz doesn’t need to stop being so aggressive. Henman has been commentating during the Australian Open on Eurosport and alongside former No. 1 Mats Wilander. Wilander also mentioned during the run of the tournament that Alcaraz is a bit like Nick Kyrgios. But he did not mean that in a positive way.
Kyrgios has extreme talent but sometimes tries to hit shots in such a way as the make the play unnecessarily more dramatic. For instance, why hit “tweeners,” as Wilander said, when simply hitting the ball back and playing the point might be better.
Henman, however, disputed Wilander and simply said, “We need to be careful of what we wish for.” That may be true. Of course, for Carlos Alcaraz to win a lot more Grand Slams, he likely needs to be less showy and just win points the boring way.
Speaking of boring, the rivalry between Alexander Zverev and Daniil Medvedev is not. We caught a glimpse of the dislike between the players (at least what Zverev thinks of Medvedev) during a season two episode of the Netflix series Break Point. Zverev implied Medvedev was a “dirty” player.
The two players met in the semifinals of the Australian Open and Medvedev won in five sets, after which he may have said “karma” to the crowd. This was a word Zverev used during Break Point when talking about a Medvedev loss. But after the match, one in which Zverev led two sets to love before Medvedev came back to win the final three sets, Zverev simply could not give Medvedev credit for the victory and Zverev instead blamed the loss on his being “sick.” The German certainly did not look sick in winning the first two sets of the match, however.
Emma Raducanu, the 2021 US Open champion, has battled a ton of injuries over the last couple of years. She has had wrist and ankle surgery and is just now beginning to look like her former self. While Raducanu did not make a deep run at the Australian Open, she did have a quality first-round victory over Shelby Rogers. Raducanu then lost in three sets in the second round to Yafan Wang.
But speaking on Sky Sports during the Australian Open, former WTA player Laura Robson thinks Raducanu could have a nice 2024. Robson said, “I feel like only good things are coming for Emma and even though she was sick on court, she competed really well. She was mentally very tough and those are the things that matter most.” Raducanu playing well again would certainly be exciting for tennis.