In the middle of the afternoon at the Philippe Chatrier, the hour of play that Rafael Nadal defended so much, Sasha Zverev renounces his role. He refuses: he doesn't want to be a generational sandwich.
What the heck!
Zverev (25) has been feeling trapped by the past generation for years, cannibalized by the Big Three, and now stones are raining down on him from below.
Zverev is the Olympic champion in Tokyo 2020, and has won a masters tournament (2018) and five Masters 1,000, but those three giants have never let him go further. One by one, both Nadal and Djokovic, and even Federer, have been vetoing his way to any Grand Slam title, how desperate people are.
When will they retire?
Zverev feels that complex, the feeling that his moment has not yet come -a feeling shared by all the Next Gen: Medvedev, Rublev, Tiafoe, Tsitsipas, Shapovalov...-, but he is also almost two meters tall, and almost always serves over 200 km/h, and this time it seems inspired.
Carlos Alcaraz (19), the tennis player of the moment, the wonderful teenager who had tormented him in Madrid a little over fifteen days ago, does not seem so, he does not seem inspired.
No, at least, in the first round: the Murcian makes 16 unforced errors in that first set, a mismatch that weighs him down and condemns him, and the opening set is won by Zverev (6-4).
And then?
More of the same.
Zverev is still a jackhammer. He serves strong and runs after all the blows, he runs more than ever, and Alcaraz moments do not come, to the astonishment of the audience, the fifteen thousand souls who have appeared at the Philippe Chatrier and who, disconcerted, attend the Zverev rebellion . Alcaraz's wonderful drop shots don't arrive, nor does his lob, and his right hand is a flan: it goes long again and again, or crashes into the net, and the Murcian begins an interior monologue.
He gestures after each failure, he says to himself: "raise them more".
Or also: "Cut them, they are very long".
Feel the temptation to throw the racket against the clay.
And Juan Carlos Ferrero, stiff in his box, puts his hand to his mouth and wonders what to do, now that his boy is stuck and the German is taking flight.
The German flies, who breaks Alcaraz in the seventh game and defends the break and seizes the second set: 6-4 also, as in the first set, at 1h29m of the match.
Generous, the parishioners take sides.
They side with Alcaraz, because they want more tennis and it is still a quarter past six in the afternoon and there is a long time until Nadal-Djokovic on the night shift (8:45 p.m.).
What are you going to do in the intermission?
-Carlos, Carlos, Carlos! -is heard in the Bois de Boulogne.
And Carlos offers some glimpses. He serves better, sometimes to the German's body, and gains consistency in the baseline, timing more and attacking less, and also gives away a range of drop shots.
But Zverev does not loosen up and does not deliver the service either.
What blows the German giant launches, the percentage does not drop, it remains above 200 km/h and many go inside!
At 2h03m, Alcaraz seems defeated. He can't find the crack, he can't find a way to reverse the situation, which makes it ugly for him: he is 0-30 down in the ninth game.
If you lose this service, alea jacta est.
And there, right there, there is a dramatic plot twist.
A drop shot from Alcaraz enters, and then a direct serve and a serve-volley, and then the Murcian accelerates more and finally breaks Zverev's serve and takes over the third set and the public goes crazy and Zverev is furious.
-Tell them to shut up! Zverev tells the judge-referee.
The public calls for freedom of expression: boo the German!
And the party ventures into unpredictable territory. The wind begins to blow, it's already cooling in Philippe Chatrier, a bad thing for Nadal's tennis, which comes later, and Alcaraz and Zverev fight and no one lets go until they reach the tie break.
Sudden death is Russian roulette. Zverev plays against Alcaraz and against fifteen thousand throats: the Philippe Chatrier has definitely chosen:
-Carlos, Carlos, Carlos!
The Murcian hits a backhand down the line and has a set point, but hits the net and then loses another exchange and now it's Zverev who has match point. He doesn't take it to the first, but to the second. At 3:18 a.m., the German puts down the teenage revolution.
It remains to be seen how they fare on Friday, when they take on the Big Three again.
