In retaining his title at Indian Wells, Carlos Alcaraz rediscovered both his mojo and his magic, reminding everyone, especially his rivals at the top of the men’s game, that at his best he is almost certainly the most complete player on the ATP Tour and possibly the most complete male tennis player ever. By beating the previously unbeatable (at least in 2024) Jannik Sinner in the semifinal and Daniil Medvedev in the final, the young Spaniard showed that he is nearly back to his Major-winning best, which will be ominous news for every other male tennis player on the planet, Novak Djokovic included.
First Title Since Wimbledon
Alcaraz’s triumph in the California desert, for the second year in a row, gave him his first title since he won Wimbledon last July, and he won it in truly spectacular style. Throughout the Indian Wells fortnight (as it has now become), he showed that he has rediscovered not only the consistency that is required to win Masters and Majors but the magic that is also required when things get tough and matches get tight.
Alcaraz’s last three matches at Indian Wells were of truly Grand Slam second-week quality, as he faced Alexander Zverev, the Olympic champion, in the quarterfinal, Jannik Sinner, the Australian Open champion, in the semifinal and Medvedev, a former Major winner, in the final. Yet he was able to overcome all the obstacles that he faced in those matches with such power, skill and sheer elan that it was a reminder of how he had really first broken through on the ATP Tour two years ago.
A Penchant For The Miraculous
Although Alcaraz had first announced himself on the world stage with his historic run to the US Open quarterfinals in 2021 when he was just 18, arguably he first really demonstrated his breathtaking capacity as a player in the spring of 2022, when he won the Rio Open to secure his first ATP 500 Final, soon afterwards won his first Masters 1000 title in Miami and immediately backed it up by winning his second Masters 1000 title in Madrid.
That remarkable run of early 2022 demonstrated everything about Alcaraz that has made him the most exciting male player to emerge since the end of the Big Three era. He appeared to possess everything required of a Major-winning champion – and a little more besides. In addition to his physical stamina and technical brilliance, he also displayed what might be called a penchant for the miraculous: a priceless ability not just to play seemingly impossible shots but to achieve seemingly impossible things in a tournament.
In Rio in 2022, he virtually played a one-day tournament, as rain delays meant that he had to play a quarterfinal, semifinal and final all within 24 hours, yet he still won the title. And in Madrid a few months later, he famously became the first man ever to beat both Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic at the same clay-court tournament, despite suffering what initially looked like a serious ankle injury in the first match against Nadal.
It was that truly astonishing combination of physical, technical and competitive excellence that established Alcaraz as the outstanding player to emerge since the hey day of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, and he continued to demonstrate it during his first two Major wins: at the US Open in 2022; and then, most impressively, at Wimbledon in 2023, when he achieved arguably the greatest ever maiden Wimbledon win by beating Djokovic, the defending champion (and seven-time Wimbledon winner), in a classic five-set final.
Post-Wimbledon Disappointment
It is fair to say that ever since that Wimbledon win, Alcaraz has not been quite as imperious as he had been before. The defeat that he suffered to Djokovic in the Cincinnati Masters Final last summer, just over a month after beating the Great Serb at Wimbledon, obviously affected him more deeply than had been realised at the time. When he wept openly and publicly after that defeat, which came after he was a set and a break up in a three-set match, it seemed almost odd, with many people wondering why he was showing such emotion after a narrow defeat in a non-Major final.
Whatever the reason for those tears, Alcaraz never seemed quite the same player for the rest of the 2023 season, such that he lost in the US Open semifinal to Medvedev, and he also began 2024 in relatively desultory fashion. He was beaten by Zverev in the Australian Open quarterfinal and then injured his ankle, again, while playing in Rio. Consequently, given that this was the longest period that he had gone without winning a tournament since his first ATP Tour event win in Croatia in the summer of 2021, a few doubts had begun to be expressed about him, really for the first time in his career.
Of course, those doubts only intensified because of the spectacular Sinner’s spectacular form. Having beaten Alcaraz in Beijing in the autumn, Sinner had gone on a near-six-month unbeaten run, encompassing Davis Cup victory with Italy and his first Major singles title in Melbourne. So, when the best two young male tennis players in the world met in the semifinal in Indian Wells over the weekend, many regarded Sinner as the pre-match favourite.
Disappointment Swept Aside In Indian Wells
The doubts about Alcaraz only intensified after the first set in the semifinal against Sinner, which the Italian won 6-1 after a rain break. At that point, Sinner was hitting the ball so hard and so cleanly that he was virtually emitting machine-gun fire from his racket rather than single bullets, as he swept Alcaraz aside with relative ease.
However, in addition to Federer-like flair and Nadal-like competitiveness, Alcaraz has always exhibited Djokovic-like resilience, and he showed that again in the final two sets of the semifinal. Having been breadsticked (losing a set 6-1) by a player who had won his previous 19 matches, he would only have been only human if he experienced some self-doubt. But of course Alcaraz often shows seemingly inhuman powers on a tennis court and he showed them again versus Sinner, as he broke him early in both the second and third sets. Sinner may have been affected by a bad fall at the start of the third set, but even if he had been in peak physical condition it is doubtful that he would have stopped Alcaraz once he had got on a roll. At such times, he is not so much a Raging Bull à la Nadal as a Rampaging Bull, who simply cannot be stopped.
That rampaging quality was even more evident in the final against Medvedev. As against Sinner, Alcaraz started slowly, dropping his first service game to go 3-0 down in the first set. However, he promptly broke Medvedev back to win the next three games, level the set and take it to a tiebreak. And once he had won that tiebreak 7-5, there was certainly no stopping him as he surged through the second set 6-1 to retain his Indian Wells title.
Alcaraz’s Best Looks Like The Best of Any Male Player
Indian Wells is often regarded as “The Fifth Major” in tennis, just as The Players’ Championship (coincidentally staged over the same weekend) is regarded as “The Fifth Major” in golf. That is largely because the facilities and the competition, for both men and women, at Indian Wells are probably exceeded only by those at the Grand Slam tournaments.
Certainly the quality of player on display at Indian Wells is of a uniformly high standard, with all the best players in the world gathered together for the first time since the Australian Open. Thus it is possible to project forward from Indian Wells to the European clay-court season and the two Majors (Roland Garros and Wimbledon) that make up the tennis spring and summer, and predict who will do well in the heart of the tennis season.
On the evidence of Indian Wells, that is likely to be Alcaraz. Against Sinner, who could not have been more confident coming into the semifinal after his own superb run recently, and against Medvedev in the final, he reminded everyone that his best tennis is probably the best tennis that any man can produce. And that almost certainly includes Novak Djokovic now, especially after his early shock loss to Luca Nardi in Indian Wells.
Djokovic is certainly not done yet, but he is showing signs of weakening, at least relative to his own extraordinarily high standards. He will be supremely motivated to win his 25th Major either in Paris or London, as will Sinner and Medvedev, but Alcaraz reminded everyone with his Indian Wells triumph that, at his best, he is the man to beat.
Main photo credit: Brandon Magpantay/ Special to The Desert Sun / USA TODAY NETWORK
