MADRID – This weekend marks a milestone for Carlos Alcaraz that is as symbolic as it is unsettling: 60 days will have passed since the last time he hit a ball with his racket—a two-month absence from the tour that represents the longest layoff in the Spanish tennis player’s career.
The seven-time Grand Slam champion played his last match on April 14th at the ATP 500 in Barcelona, when he noticed discomfort in his right wrist while returning a serve from Finland’s Otto Virtanen. Alcaraz managed to win the match, but the following day he announced to the media that he could not continue competing, sounding the alarm bells for the clay-court swing. He subsequently withdrew from Madrid, Rome, and Roland Garros, before also pulling out of the two grass-court tournaments he had scheduled on his calendar, Queen’s and Wimbledon.
His return is expected, at the earliest, for the North American hard-court swing, which kicks off on August 2nd with the Canada Masters 1000 and will conclude with the US Open, where Alcaraz is the defending champion. Are the remaining seven weeks until the start of that swing enough time? Right now, that question has no answer: Alcaraz and his team made the decision to be as cautious as possible, fully aware that an improperly healed wrist injury can become a lifelong problem. Just ask Juan Martín del Potro or Dominic Thiem.
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Sixty days after his last match, Alcaraz still has no return date and has not played tennis again. “From home, I’m watching the results, I’m watching my rivals compete, the tournaments I would love to be participating in but can’t. But, in the end, everything happens for a reason. I believe it’s destiny and that life will have something prepared for me when I return—something beautiful, I hope,” a hopeful Alcaraz said in late May, in one of the few statements he has made since the injury.
The Spaniard, who turned 23 in May, had been wearing an immobilizing splint on the joint. However, this Friday, his fitness coach, Alberto Lledó, uploaded a video to Instagram showing Alcaraz working out in the streets of an industrial park in his native Murcia without the splint. A step forward, for sure. “Weeks that multiply. I can no longer keep up with his pace… back in 2019 we could manage something. Great Carlos Alcaraz in the industrial parks, Rocky-style,” Lledó wrote, in an allusion to the street runs done by the boxer Rocky Balboa.
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The video perfectly explains the attitude Alcaraz has chosen in the face of the most serious injury of his career: he has accepted that he will be away from tennis for a long time, but he has spotted an opportunity. Amid the secrecy and the logical concern triggered by seeing the former world number one off the tour, the messages emerging from his innermost circle invite us to look at the glass half full. Beyond the frustration or discouragement of not knowing when he will return, Alcaraz is using this competitive desert to build a version of himself that promises to terrify his rivals. The Spaniard is pushing his body to the limit to reappear as strong as an ox when the time comes. After all, unlike other types of injuries, a wrist ailment allows a player to work on many other parts of the body to reinforce that physical armor.
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His team views it as a mini-preseason—an opportunity to recharge his mental batteries and get his body in top shape for what lies ahead. Free from the demands of weekly travel, jet lag, and the invisible wear and tear of competition, Alcaraz is aware that if his wrist allows him to compete in the second half of the season, his body will be more prepared than ever for that final stretch of the year—a stretch he has always reached running on fumes. One stat reflects this clearly: out of his 26 titles, only two (Beijing 2024 and Tokyo 2025) came from September onward.
While his rivals accumulate miles, five-set battles, and extreme wear and tear on their bodies, Alcaraz wants to burst back onto the tour fresh, hungry, and in enviable physical shape. He wants to peak just as everyone else begins to feel the fatigue of an exhausting season. But for that to happen, the wrist must heal completely.
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