With Rafael Nadal ending his career, the question remains: Can Carlos Alcaraz follow in his footsteps and maybe even surpass his Grand Slam record?
“We have achieved so many amazing things together; now it’s up to you to continue doing them,” said Nadal to Alcaraz. Nadal ended his career being one of the greatest players of all time, and definitely being the greatest clay-court player of all time.
Let’s just see some of the records Nadal has made throughout his brilliant career.
14 French Open titles.
22 Grand Slam titles.
92 Career Singles titles.
209 weeks as world number 1.
Olympic singles and doubles gold medals.
The list is longer, but we will stick to the Grand Slam titles.
At 21 years of age, Carlos has already been the best player in the world, won four Grand Slam titles, and won an Olympic silver medal in singles. Both Carlos and Rafael have been struggling with injuries from the very beginning. Unlike Nadal, Alcaraz is a player who can compete on any surface. His least favorite surface is the indoor hard courts, where he usually underperforms. We believe his biggest challenge will be winning the Australian Open, where he had his biggest result this season, reaching the quarterfinals, where Zverev stopped him in four tight sets.
So far in his young career, Carlos has already won two Wimbledon titles, one US Open title, and one French Open title. We believe that he will be the most dominant player at Wimbledon and the French Open, which is kind of contradictory considering how different those tournaments are. Right now, his biggest rival is Jannik Sinner. Carlos is a better clay-court player than Sinner, so we expect Alcaraz to continue winning the French Open if he stays healthy.
Nadal won his last Grand Slam title in 2022 at age 36. We will give Carlos the same amount of time, meaning he has 14-15 seasons left in the tank. That said, Alcaraz must win 19 more Grand Slam titles to surpass Rafael Nadal. With his current rivals and upcoming next-gen starts, we believe that if Alcaraz stays healthy, he could average two Grand Slam titles per season until he is 30 years old, which would be extraordinary but doable. Rafael had to fight with Novak and Roger, and on the other hand, it looks like Carlos is just fighting with Sinner in the Grand Slam tournaments.
That being said, if Carlos does that, he would already have 22 Grand Slam titles by the age of 30. We believe that if he stays healthy, he could not only surpass Rafael Nadal but also Novak Djokovic.
You can almost count on him winning the French Open and Wimbledon. He has already shown us that he can also perform in New York. The Great Rafael Nadal also struggled on indoor hard courts throughout his career, but he was still able to win the Australian Open two times. As time goes on, we expect Carlos to adapt to each surface and to compete for the titles in Australia as well.
That said, we believe that Alcaraz will win at least 23 Grand Slam titles, but probably even more, if he just takes care of his body.
Main Photo Credit: Susan Mullane-USA TODAY Sports
