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There were many things that could have rushed into Carlos Alcaraz’s mind that followed his attainment of a goal he has chased his entire life, the career grand slam, achieved by defeating Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open.
He could have thought about the immense hard work and discipline it took to achieve all of this, his comically large, tight-knit team and family that faithfully follows him around the world or even how close he came to losing his semi-final two days earlier.
Instead, as Alcaraz navigated the long line of post-slam interviews for the seventh time, while tightly holding the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, his thoughts cast back to … his haters: “I’m thinking about the people who said I wouldn’t make it, who thought I’d come here to Australia and not even make it past the quarter-finals,” he told Eurosport Spain.
“That I’d come here to Australia and not play good tennis. Those who didn’t believe in me. I remember those people. It seems ironic that when I should be thinking about my people, my team, all the work we’ve put in, that’s the thought that came to me.”
There have been many challenges for Alcaraz and he has had to overcome ample obstacles to continue winning major titles at such an unprecedented rate, but controversy is not something with which he is familiar. For all his fire on the court, the 22-year-old is a warm, pleasant person who plays fairly and has become a popular figure on and off the court. Last year, despite being dominated by him, his fellow players voted him the winner of ATP’s sportsmanship award. He is not used to being part of any sort of disharmony.
For that reason, the aftermath of 17 December, when Alcaraz ended the partnership with his longtime coach Juan Carlos Ferrero, was an unusual experience. The next day, reporters showed up at his tennis club in El Palmar, Murcia in an attempt to elicit comment from him on the subject as he drove into work. The noise only grew louder once Ferrero broke his silence.
While Alcaraz and his team presented the split as mutual, the 45-year-old coach stated he had wished to stay on and was pained by no longer being part of Alcaraz’s journey. For weeks, questions about the world No 1’s decision and future prospects dominated Spain’s large network of sports radio shows and newspapers. Alcaraz is very active on social media, meaning he saw a lot of it.
He handled those difficulties the right way, focusing on his work with his team and on this ultimate goal. Becoming the youngest man to win seven grand slam titles – and the career grand slam – is the deserved payoff. It is so typical of his prodigious talent and toughness that, in his first tournament since promoting Samuel López as his main coach, he departed with this career-defining achievement.
While Ferrero will always be a key figure in Alcaraz’s development, this victory is validation of the decision. Alcaraz is still so young, but he is also maturing. He has shown he is capable of taking more responsibility and making difficult decisions with his team.
Despite how Jannik Sinner stumbled, his loss to Djokovic in the semi-final being his poorest result in a major since defeat by Daniil Medvedev at Wimbledon 2024, the ATP remains a duopoly. He and Alcaraz will face each other in finals for the foreseeable future and Alcaraz will certainly lose to Sinner. However, this tournament underlined why the Spaniard is on his own unique path and is ahead of all the others since the end of the big three era.
Alcaraz has been on an unprecedented trajectory for a long time now. Before achieving these age records on Sunday, at 19 he became the youngest man to be No 1 in the world after his US Open triumph in 2022, the only teenager to do so.
With this victory, he has made a strong case for being the best young male the sport has seen. Whether this will convert to his ultimate goal of sitting at the top table as an equal of Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer is still far from certain. However, these are early days and he has so much more to achieve.
