The Queen’s will be for Carlos Alcaraz only the third grass-court tournament of his young career, but it is nevertheless on this little-known surface that the Spaniard will have to recover from his painfully lost Roland-Garros semi-final against Novak Djokovic.
The body of this gifted 20-year-old in Paris gave way due to stress and poor mental management of the event. Crippled with cramp, he collapsed 6-3, 5-7, 6-1, 6-1. But it is now a new challenge that awaits him: to prepare for a change of surface in view of the next Grand Slam, Wimbledon, which arrives in two weeks (July 3 to 16).
“I arrived in London on Saturday morning and had my first training on the grass yesterday,” Alcaraz told a press conference on Sunday. “I couldn’t train too much at home because we don’t have grass pitches. I have to adapt my movements and my shots on the grass, but I’m really happy with the training I’ve had here.”
On the grass, he analyzed Sunday at a press conference, “you have to be more careful than on other surfaces, so for me, the most difficult thing on the grass is movement (…) The most comfortable thing is to go to the net and play aggressively all the time, that’s my style and I like that”.
“But there are a lot of players who play slice on grass. I’m not part of it, so I have to think about the movement. I have to be focused on every movement and every blow, ”continues the young man who reached the knockout stages of Wimbledon last year, beaten in four sets by Jannik Sinner.
“For me, moving on grass is more tiring. It’s totally different, so you have to be really precise,” concludes the Spaniard, who will be seeded number one at Queen’s, and will start the tournament against French qualifier Arthur Fils.
After his defeat in Paris, Alcaraz fell to second in the world behind Djokovic. To quickly find the summit, he will have to master the grass. To date, his ten titles on the circuit have all been won on clay (seven) or hard courts (three).
