Wimbledon – first round –
Peace is over. He came the murmur, the tail, The Queue, the strawberries, the Pimm’s, the nuclear white, the flowers, the hats, the perfectly shaved green. Everything that makes Wimbledon so fascinating. Everything so perfect, strands at eight millimeters. The 19th district of London dawns this Monday in full swing – the lady wrapped in a Palestinian flag loudly denounces, as she descends Church Road towards the club – and the latest champion emerges unspoiled. Amid so much charm and all the fascination, a dreamlike setting, Carlos Alcaraz sets foot on Center Court and returns exactly as he left a year ago: victorious, happy, enjoying himself. He is better off going at half throttle, although he finds a surprising challenge: 7-6 (3), 7-5 and 6-2, in 2h 22m. Prolific staging before the Estonian Mark Lajal, who plays with the racket and collaborates to make it entertaining; ready to fall, he thinks with that instinct of Generation Z, it’s better to have a good time. So they have fun.
They are 21 years old (both 2003) and their spirit pushes them to try to entertain. The Murcian does not need much to make us sigh and his rival does not detract from the opportunity, because he has not seen another like it – six matches in the elite, more defeats (4) than triumphs (2) – and he tries to be up to par; after all, it is not every day that a tournament like Wimbledon opens, unique among the only ones, and there are not too many opportunities to play against Alcaraz, who in competitive terms pushes only as much as strictly necessary. With a couple of opportune accelerations it is enough. Slowly, this is long; but without getting overconfident. He resolves the first set with a precise start in the tie-break and recovers the ground conceded in the second with a break to love and another push that brings Lajal (269th in the world, right-handed, considerable strength) back to reality. The third one falls directly to his side, simply natural inertia; same hedonistic spirit, two different worlds when it comes to competing.
David Beckham applauds him from the front row of the Royal Boxwrapped the Sir in his elegant tan suit. The Englishman — his right foot is shaped like a banana — knows something about impossible parabolas, pronounced curves and spin, and he appreciates the artistic details that the Spaniard’s strings occasionally spit out, delicate when volleying but forceful in the execution from the back. This time he prioritizes practicality, it is a friendly first round. But there are always details. “The savior of tennis (who still lives with his mother)”, the magazine of the Sunday Times, underlining the exceptionality of a tennis player who escapes the tedious pim-pam-pum that has been taking over the present. So he turns his wrist and throws the shot, and the ball falls in slow motion on the soft grass, as if it were Wembley, still without bald spots on the bottom. This is about trajectories, and the audience reacts with open mouth when the sliced backhand traces a delicious diagonal from top to bottom, withering.
Alcaraz’s tennis has those very pictorial touches and also something scientific; the weightlessness, those elastic foreshortenings in the rest in which he contorts his trunk as if it were made of rubber, or the vertiginous rotating journey of the ball when he applies the lever like a whip. At full throttle, when he wants. Lajal’s family comes from the world of motor racing and the Estonian, he said these days, admires Verstappen’s voracity and the vertigo of Formula 1, so he continues to enjoy it even though when it comes down to it, the Murcian denies him, those two 0-40s are of no use because he achieves little. The Estonian does not let himself down, which is no small thing. He is here to savour it and the public appreciates the courage, the insistence and the going for the clash, without complexes. With his neck and temples almost at zero, a crown of dreadlocks like a reindeer’s antlers, he leaves to a standing ovation and Alcaraz – against Aleksandar Vukic (69th) in the second station; 6-7(9), 6-4, 6-4, 3-6 and 7-6(8) for the Australian against Sebastian Ofner – joins in the applause because tennis is nothing more than a mere game and, as his manifesto says, nothing makes much sense if there is not some fun involved.
“I LIKE TO SEARCH FOR PERFECTION”
AC | London
Alcaraz returned to La Catedral and the tickling in his stomach, positive because he had the honor of opening this year the competition for the title obtained last year, was there.
“It’s something I hope goes away, but I think having those nerves is good if you control them when things aren’t going quite right. At the time, Roger [Federer]Rafa [Nadal] and Novak [Djokovic] They felt that when they jumped to the Central, and they were controlled,” said the man from El Palmar.
In this regard, the tennis player commented that he follows a specific routine before going out on the court “so as not to think so much about the match.” “The day before,” he said, “you have that thought, but we try to disconnect, do other things, be with my team and with my close people who are here; play golf, for example.”
He also follows a series of breathing techniques “to try to focus on things other than the game until the moment he has to concentrate, 45 minutes or an hour before.” And once he gets down to it, he says, he sets the bar very high.
“I always like to be perfect or seek perfection, to be as close as possible. There are certain things that I have to improve, in which I have not looked very good, but overall, I have seen myself at a good level, playing and moving well. For a first round, which is never easy to start, I have been good,” she said.
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