At this point in the tournament, the favorites are forced to roll up their sleeves.
Stéfanos Tsitsipás (24) must raise his level of play to knock out Alex de Miñaúr, and then Carlos Alcaraz (19), on another windy afternoon that is also getting cooler, lives a torment before getting rid of the combative Alejandro Davidovich.
(...)
For years, we chroniclers have filled pages narrating Nadal's exploits (let's see how far this adventure goes), and now we have focused on Alcaraz, and both exercises are stark, because in that process we have left behind a fan of magnificent Spanish tennis players, people almost always minimized by the colossi.
David Ferrer, Fernando Verdasco, Tommy Robredo and Roberto Bautista, in their time, have spent years in Nadal's shadow. The chronicler wonders how Davidovich (23), a tennis player from our country, and yet a stranger at the RCTB, will feel today.
From a bird's eye view, on a stage that brings together 7,800 souls, the chronicler barely makes out an amateur who, almost surreptitiously, curses herself when Davidovich makes a mistake.
The rest of the public applauds Alcaraz.
Alcaraz fails to applaud himself.
Alcaraz fights with himself and with the wind, and also with Davidovich, more of a tennis player than a media player. The man from Malaga is today the 38th tennis player in the world, but a few months ago he was around the Top 20 and a year ago he played in the Monte Carlo final, it was bad.
Before reaching that Monte Carlo final against Tsitsipás, Davidovich had got rid of Djokovic, Goffin, Fritz and Dimitrov, a mix of legendary and solvent tennis players whose name, crossed out in red ink, will always appear in the showcase of victims.
Perhaps proud of those feats, Davidovich had broken into the RCTB yesterday, colluded with the wind and had turned everything upside down.
And Alcaraz, to roll up his sleeves.
"Until now, I had never competed with Álex," Alcaraz had said the day before. But we know each other well. Together, we have played many sets, many practices. And I know he has a great repertoire of shots from impossible angles. And that his Gillette (topspin, cutting movement) can hurt you.
True, Davidovich's Gillette hurts the Murcian talent, the teenager who defends the 2022 title. But, more than Davidovich's successes, Alcaraz suffers his own mistakes.
Before projecting until the tie break of the first set, the Murcian has accumulated 26 unforced errors, an outrage that prevents him from taking flight and that keeps Davidovich connected to the game.
It is strange, Davidovich does almost everything well, and yet he falls apart in the outcome of sudden death. He does it with an absurd right hand that sends the ball to the stands and his options, to the trash can.
Alcaraz did not take off even then, who continued to give one of lime and another of sand, and combined delicious drop shots with failed parallel setbacks, but remained in the fight until the closing, when Alcaraz solved the game by breaking Davidovich's serve.
Before, Tsitsipás draws a picture in a gray tone, a work that barely shines, more effective than efficient, today's Tsitsipás is all trade.
De Minaúr doesn't let him show off either. The Australian, one of the most controversial projects of the Next Gen (it has never exploded in all the splendor that it was presumed), plays an academic game, little given to showing off. He pulls back and aspires to lengthen the exchanges, and Tsitsipás responds angrily, preferring to shorten the story, not fully entering the game. The game crashes.
There is no paint on the clay canvas, only fragments of an exercise that does not take flight are outlined, all too much in favor of the Greek, who advances with great strides through the lower box until the penultimate stop, where Musetti awaits him.
–The fact that Musetti has not played today, is it good or bad for him? –He is asked (Musetti has passed the round without jumping on the track, benefited from Sinner's injury).
We'll see him at the game, right? –answers Tsitsipás.
