NEW YORK – Carlos Alcaraz is one of the stars who suffers from a very North American habit: air conditioning on full blast.
‘It’s so cold in here,’ says the 2022 US Open champion. The freezing conference room, which even forces the woman in charge of transcribing what the protagonists say, to wear a jacket and scarf, contrasts with the heat experienced on the court of the same venue minutes earlier, where the Spaniard advanced to the second round of the last Grand Slam of the year with a four-set victory over Australian Li Tu.
Still nobody, neither journalists nor players, has been able to solve the mystery of why the temperature in that room is so low. What Alcaraz does have an answer for is to determine one thing that ends up being very beneficial for his tennis: golf.
Stepping out onto the 18-hole grass court and hitting a still ball, much smaller than a tennis ball, with clubs instead of racquets, and at a diametrically different pace, is for the world number three, a window. A balm for the head when tennis gets overwhelming.
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“With Casper (Ruud) we talked a lot about playing one day, you know, in the previous tournaments, and here finally we could make it happen”, says Alcaraz. Both finalists at Flushing Meadows in 2022 gave themselves the pleasure of playing a round, which the Norwegian won, before the start of the US Open. It was a necessary play to perform later on with the racquet.
“We talked a lot about how much — how good is golf for us, for our mind just to disconnect, just to turn off our minds, just to be better, you know, on court, just to be better on the tournaments”, explains the Spaniard.
“We can’t think 24 hours, seven days per week on tennis. You have to have, you know, your life as well just trying to do other things and try to think about other things just to, let’s say, have 100%, you know, to be better on court and to feel much better, think clearly,’ he adds.
The record belongs to McEnroe
The numbers and statistics motivate Alcaraz. The victory over the Australian was his 60th Grand Slam victory. A reporter revealed to him that there is only one tennis player who reached that number of victories in fewer matches than him: John McEnroe.
‘What a pity that McEnroe beat me by one match! The truth is that for me it is an honour to be able to share these kinds of statistics with great legends of the sport. Now 60, then we want to go to 70 and when I reach 70, then for the 80, right?’, he bet.
With the titles at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, the Paris 2024 silver medallist has now won 15 consecutive games in major tournaments. His last defeat was to Alexander Zverev in the quarter-finals of the Australian Open.
‘I’m going to try to keep the streak going up,’ he said.
