MADRID – When you watch Carlos Alcaraz on a tennis court, you see a catalogue of impossible solutions, a staggering physical display and an contagious joy.
Yet on the flip side of his brilliance there was sometimes a small weakness: inconsistency. The Spaniard was capable of the very best — winning a Grand Slam, reaching No. 1, beating the biggest names — but at the same time he struggled to find the emotional stability that would allow him to avoid major ups and downs, both during the season and within matches themselves.
“In the second set I never came back, I was almost on the moon,” Alcaraz once said after one of those lapses. That particular one cost him the semi-final of the 2023 US Open against Daniil Medvedev. The Spaniard often drifted out of matches. Sometimes he came back in time; on other occasions it was too late. Alcaraz insisted again and again that he was working on becoming more consistent. And it is now clear that he has achieved it.
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“I think on court I control my emotions much better. I’d say that has been the key to the level of tennis I’ve been playing lately,” Alcaraz said a few days ago in a press conference in Indian Wells. “On court I’m controlling myself and from a place of calm I can find the solutions.”
“In recent months, when I got angry or when I was playing badly or whatever it was, I simply found my way back because I stayed calm,” added the ATP No. 1. “I was controlling myself and my emotions, and I kept good concentration.”
Maturity after the split with Ferrero
The numbers speak for themselves: Alcaraz has gone almost 12 months without accidents. Since back-to-back defeats to Jack Draper — in the semi-finals of Indian Wells 2025 — and David Goffin — in his debut in Miami 2025 — the Spaniard has played 13 tournaments with a record of nine titles, three finals and a single blemish: a defeat to Cameron Norrie in the second round of the Paris Masters.
“Paris at this time of the year isn’t for us,” Alcaraz joked days after that loss with doubles player Marcel Granollers. Both Spaniards had been champions in the French capital in May, at Roland Garros.
The fact that two of those three lost finals were against Jannik Sinner is another statistic that highlights his distance from the rest. In the other, the final in Barcelona against Holger Rune, he was injured.
But beyond the coldness of the numbers, what is striking is the context: that Alcaraz has managed to sustain this level of maturity just after the traumatic split with Juan Carlos Ferrero, the coach who guided him for seven years and with whom he won everything.
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It is hard to measure how difficult it is to win the Australian Open and arrive in March at Indian Wells without a single defeat, with a 12-0 record after the emotional earthquake caused by the separation from Ferrero.
“Something like that is never easy because in the end there’s an emotional side to it and that will always be there,” David Ferrer, former world No. 3 and current captain of Spain’s Davis Cup team, told CLAY and RG Media. “Carlos is a very focused player, very professional, and he has shown that he handled it emotionally very well, both in Australia and in Doha.”
“Carlitos is having a very good year. Obviously he hasn’t lost a match yet and that also gives you a lot of confidence and stability. I think he’s a special player, different, like Rafa Nadal was, like the Big Three. They are players who handle pressure very well,” Ferrer added.
“On court he manages to relax and put things into perspective”
Carla Suárez, captain of Spain’s Billie Jean King Cup team, expressed a very similar view to Ferrer’s. “Alcaraz is developing a level of maturity and experience that allows him to handle all those emotions. It’s very positive that he recognises it and says it openly, because that already puts you one step ahead in managing emotions,” the former Spanish player told CLAY.
The former world No. 6 added another point: how the rest of the tour must feel about it.
“Maybe off court he keeps turning the Ferrero situation over in his head, but once he’s on court he manages to relax and put it into perspective. He’s seen that with Samu (López) and with his brother he can also perform very well, and if he says he now feels calmer and more stable, I’d be afraid to face him.”
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