It was a question of fuel, not surface. Carlos Alcaraz won his first indoor Masters title in Paris on Sunday, breaking down one of the walls that had held out against him longest in his career. He now has a treble unprecedented in tennis history within reach.
The end of the season, centred on the European indoor swing and headlined by the Paris Masters and the ATP Finals, has always been hostile territory for Spain’s best players. David Ferrer, the 2012 Paris champion, and Àlex Corretja and Manuel Orantes, who won the Masters Cup in 1998 and 1975 respectively, are the only three exceptions.
Nadal suffered badly (no titles from 20 appearances between Paris and the ATP Finals), and so did Alcaraz (none from eight until Sunday). But with his 7-6(5), 7-5 win over Ben Shelton, the future charge of Juan Carlos Ferrero, the Spaniard knocked down one of the last walls still standing in his way. He also now has the chance to become the first player in history to win Paris, the ATP Finals and the Davis Cup in the same season.
With Jannik Sinner ruled out until 2027 with a knee injury and Alexander Zverev struggling since winning the US Open in September, Alcaraz has become the dominant force in this stretch of the season. Champion in Tokyo, Vienna and Paris in recent weeks, the Spaniard is the big favourite for the ATP Finals and the Davis Cup, the two major events that will bring the curtain down on tennis in 2026.
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The wrist injury paradox
The paradox lies in trying to understand why Alcaraz is shining in precisely the stretch of the season that had always given him trouble. One of the keys may lie, precisely, in the injury that forced him to stop.
The seven-time Grand Slam champion injured his wrist during the European clay swing and spent more than four months without competing. He missed a large part of the calendar (Madrid, Rome, Roland Garros, Wimbledon, Canada and Cincinnati, among other tournaments), but he also got something he had lacked in recent years: time to rest, recover and return to competition without carrying the wear and tear of so many months on tour. In Paris, he admitted feeling fresher than usual at this point of the year. The results are starting to prove him right.
“This tournament had always been difficult for me to play and compete in, and this time it’s different because the year is different. I’ve arrived at this part of the season fresher mentally, hungry and ambitious,” Alcaraz said in Paris this week during the last Masters event of the year.
Comparisons with his previous seasons are inevitable. The final stretch of the year has historically eluded the Spaniard, especially the indoor swing, a surface on which he had never found the consistency he showed at other points in the calendar. Alcaraz seems to have reversed the trend: fresh from winning in Vienna, he has now added Paris to his collection and has the ATP Finals and the Davis Cup in his sights. It was a question of fuel, not surface.
