The chronicler lives the experience.
He prepares to enter the tennis players' lounge, the clubhouse pool, and so he plunges into a corridor of screaming creatures, holding gigantic tennis balls, and signing photos, and caps. And they wait and wait, and they ask everyone who enters the compound:
-When does Alcaraz come out?
-When does Alcaraz arrive?
–Quaan and Alcaraz?
-Later, later... -answers the reporter, who passes quickly and with his head bowed.
In a hurry, the columnist leaves behind the corridor and enters that relaxation space where Khachanov plays with his child while the mother, pregnant again, contemplates the scene, and Tiafoe walks slowly and swaying, and Alcaraz...
Alcaraz is not there.
Because Alcaraz is piloting on track 18, now with Roberto Bautista, sparring of the first magnitude, as Denis Shapovalov and Casper Ruud had been in the previous days.
And the teenager spends a couple of hours like this, piloting like tennis players do, piloting all the time, and in the end he comes, always with his people, Juan Carlos Ferrero, who is his coach and twenty years ago he was number one Of the world; Juanjo Moreno, who is his physical trainer, and Albert Molina, who is never separated from his pupil.
Alcaraz finally reaches the corridor, and from the relaxation area, the reporter hears the cry:
-Carlos! Carlos!
And the tennis genius entertains, he always does. He asks for a pen and prepares to scribble his name among the creatures who elbow their way through, and applaud and give him a standing ovation.
He is the man of the year.
(And even more so, after the absence of the convalescent Nadal.)
(...)
Well, now it's Tuesday and Alcaraz will be jumping on the court. He will jump there in the early afternoon, where the Portuguese Nuno Borges is waiting for him.
Borges (26) is the 79th racket in the world, the best Portuguese tennis player in recent years, and this Monday, almost without changing after adding a 6-2 and 6-3, he dispatched Il·lià Ivaixka, a tennis player without a shield (the Belarusian flag is not recognized).
-I don't care who is in front of me - says Alcaraz when asked -: I don't look at who comes further. If I'm in the first round, I focus on the first round. I always think that anyone can beat me.
It's a legitimate thought, and more so in a sport like tennis: if the score was 100 points and a tennis player was winning 99-0, he still wouldn't have won the match.
