There was a time when tennis came to have, so to speak, a more assembly-oriented character. The abyss that is now perceived between the number two in the world, no matter how much it is called Carlos Alcaraz and come starring in a dream career, and the number 59, Aleksander Shevchenko to whom this Friday, without needing to demand too much, he defeated 6-2, 6-1, in one hour and eight minutes, in the second round of the Madrid Masters 1000.
So, who more and who less could feel like a temporary protagonist, earn their day of glory and jump to the headers of the sports pages. Because the level, globally, was higher than now. In his first match of the European clay court season, in his reappearance after a few weeks injured, with fewer people in the Caja Mgica than those gathered to see the debut of Rafael Nadal Alcaraz, fine with the backhand, cautious with the forehand and less precise than usual with the drop shots, got rid of the Kazakh tennis player, finalist in Metz last autumn, in one fell swoop, and will face this Sunday with Thiago Seyboth Wild63, who, maybe, just maybe, presented a happier and more solvent proposal.
Reaparicin
Carlos Alcaraz’s penultimate game was on March 29, when he lost against Grigor Dimitrov in the quarterfinals of the Miami Masters 1000. The Spaniard, who had just won his fifth Masters 1000 in Indian Wells, the thirteenth title of his career, left Monte Carlo and Barcelona due to an injury to his right forearm that still prevents him from competing fully and from which he protected himself during the duel. before Shevchenko with a more extensive bandage than the one he wore in training.
Winner in recent editions at the Caja Mgica and aspiring to become the first player to win the title on three consecutive occasions, Alcaraz called for caution in the demonstrations prior to the start of the tournament, determined, like all candidates for victory in the great clay event, to arrive in the best conditions at Roland Garros, where last year the responsibility fell on him in the semifinals against Novak Djokovicin which he was a victim of cramps after the second set.
Since he took the rest of the first game blank, Alcaraz saw that he was not going to have complications to win his twelfth consecutive match in Madrid, where he has not lost since he fell to Nadal in the second round of 2021, in which he is in fact, his only defeat in his four participations in this tournament.