{"id":79538,"date":"2025-02-10T17:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T22:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=79538"},"modified":"2025-02-10T17:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T22:41:09","slug":"carlos-alcaraz-wins-in-rotterdam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/02\/10\/carlos-alcaraz-wins-in-rotterdam\/","title":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz Wins In Rotterdam To Enter Brave New Indoor World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On a huge sporting weekend, not least because of the Super Bowl, it would be easy to overlook or at least underestimate the significance of Carlos Alcaraz\u2019s victory over Alex de Minaur in the final of the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2023\/02\/18\/atp-rotterdam-famous-finals\/\" target=\"_self\">Rotterdam Open, even if it came at one of the longest-running and most storied of all European tournaments<\/a>. In time, however, the importance of the Spanish prodigy winning his first ever indoor hardcourt event may become apparent, because it could prove to be one of the key stepping-stones in turning all his natural brilliance into the stunning, week-in and week-out consistency that has made Jannik Sinner such a dominant World No.1.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Carlos Alcaraz vs Alex De Minaur For The Title \ud83c\udfc6 | Rotterdam 2025 Highlights Final\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2_gliKdp7ro?start=320&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Alcaraz\u2019s First Indoor Hardcourt Title <\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>It had always seemed odd, if not completely counter-intuitive, that Alcaraz had struggled at indoor events, when he has been so superb in outdoor events throughout his still young career, but the facts were undeniable. Before Rotterdam 2025, he had never won an indoor hardcourt event and relatively speaking he had struggled indoors, at least in comparison with his outstanding outdoor record. Even after the victory in the Dutch port city, his overall winning percentage at indoor events is \u201conly\u201d 71%, whereas his overall outdoor winning percentage is 81% <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2024\/07\/15\/carlos-alcaraz-federer-king-of-grass\/\" target=\"_self\">and on grass is a staggering 89%<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It may simply have been that playing indoors was something of a leveler for Alcaraz, bringing him down, or at least closer to, the level of most of his opponents. It is precisely because he is such a mercurial player, capable of adapting at seemingly hypersonic speed to swift changes of conditions outdoors (particularly wind), that he was somewhat stripped of that supreme adaptability indoors, where conditions obviously do not alter as much as they do outdoors. It was almost like the difference between Superman on Planet Earth and on Krypton; he was the same individual, but somehow robbed of his superpowers in a different environment.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the reason, Alcaraz put some of those indoor demons to rest as he put &#8220;Demon&#8221; (de Minaur\u2019s nickname) to bed in Rotterdam. The Australian was his usual, extremely combative self in the final and took Alcaraz to a third set before finally succumbing 6-4 3-6 6-2. Yet even when de Minaur was comfortably winning the second set (he broke early and had a chance of a double-break before closing it out), the suspicion always remained that Alcaraz would prove too good for him in the long run, and so it proved.<\/p>\n<p>In total, it was Alcaraz\u2019s third match in five in Rotterdam to go the full distance of three sets. However, on each occasion he remained remarkably cool, unfussed and fully focused, unlike on occasions in the past when he had seemed to drift out of matches, a habit he repeated as recently as last month when he failed to kill off Novak Djokovic in their Australian Open quarter-final after winning the first set. In Rotterdam, by contrast, Alcaraz was always mentally in the match and any mental lapses were relatively short-lived.<\/p>\n<p>In the first round, he had faced his conqueror at last year\u2019s US Open, Botic van de Zandschulp, who since then had also helped lead the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2024\/11\/26\/50-years-after-total-football-total-tennis-wins-italy-two-world-cups\/\" target=\"_self\">Netherlands to their first ever Davis Cup final<\/a>, en route defeating Rafael Nadal in his last ever professional tennis match. Playing in front of his home fans, van de Zandschulp could have been an even bigger threat than he was in New York. And yet Alcaraz won a tight first set on a tie-break, withstood an onslaught in the second set as he lost it 6-3, then raced through the third set 6-1.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, against Hubert Hurkacz in the Rotterdam semifinal, Alcaraz had seemed on course for a relatively straightforward straight-sets victory until he virtually threw away the second set tie-break with a particularly poorly timed double fault. Again, whereas in the past that might have had a lasting effect, in Rotterdam he brilliantly regrouped to break early in the third set and eventually win it 6-3.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Is Alcaraz Gaining Greater Consistency? <\/strong><\/h3>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2197974486\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 68.68687% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/2197974486?et=DI-eORGbT1JFz7XkFOIZfw&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=l_ap2q_3Sjpzq2x82b3A91_5C7XZJaEr94rUG7b2gIo=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" width=\"594\" height=\"408\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Over the last year in particular, during which time they have won all five of the Majors (all four in 2024 and the first in 2025), the biggest difference between Alcaraz and Sinner has appeared to be <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2024\/10\/14\/asian-swing-proves-jannik-sinner-is-new-king-of-consistency\/\" target=\"_self\">the latter\u2019s greater consistency<\/a>. Whereas Alcaraz\u2019s ceiling or top level as a player arguably remains higher than that of the Italian, Sinner\u2019s floor or bottom level as a player has certainly been higher than that of Alcaraz.<\/p>\n<p>Olympics apart, Alcaraz had a golden summer, winning both the French Open and Wimbledon, in the process becoming the first man to win those two Majors back to back in the same season since his compatriot Nadal in 2008. Overall, however, Sinner had the better year, winning the two hardcourt Majors that bookend the season and numerous other tournaments in between. That is why he remains World No.1 by a huge distance (over 3,000 points) from the World No.2, who isn\u2019t even Alcaraz but Alexander Zverev.<\/p>\n<p>It had even begun to look possible that Alcaraz and Sinner were developing a relationship and rivalry on court similar to that of Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors in the second half of the 1970s. Although it often seemed that Borg was the World No.1 because of his total domination of both the French Open and Wimbledon, in reality Connors was No.1 for far longer than Borg in that decade because of his greater capacity to grind week in and week out on tour.<\/p>\n<p>Now, however, in the wake of Rotterdam, Alcaraz&#8217;s first indoor title and one he secured after a fairly hard-fought week, there is every sign that he is rising to the challenge of trying to match Sinner\u2019s greater consistency. By winning an indoor hardcourt event for the first time, he has reminded everyone, including Sinner himself, that he has the natural ability and all-round game to win tennis matches in any conditions and on any surface. That is something that Sinner himself is yet to prove, given that his three Major titles have all come on the hardcourts of Melbourne and NYC.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Another Fabulous February for Alcaraz <\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>February, of course, is the month that Valentine\u2019s day falls in, but for many Carlos Alcaraz fans it is also the month that they first fell in love with the precocious Spaniard. Although he had already reached the 2021 US Open quarterfinal a few months earlier, it was arguably only in February 2022, when he won the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2022\/02\/21\/carlos-alcaraz-future-world-no-1\/\" target=\"_self\">2022 Rio Open and in the process beat seemingly half the world\u2019s top 10 in just over 24 hours<\/a>, that he truly demonstrated his capacity for the miraculous. A year later, even though he lost the final of the same event to Britain\u2019s Cameron Norrie, the fact that he competed at all after suffering what seemed to be a serious injury during the final was also suggestive of his superhuman abilities.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Carlos Alcaraz vs Diego Schwartzman for the Title | Rio Open 2022 Final Highlights\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Paw2gLCJFQM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>February 2025 and winning in Rotterdam might not appear to be as fantastic a February as those in 2022 and 2023, but in the long run it could prove to be even more significant. At the grand old age of 21, Alcaraz is maturing fast and adding greater consistency, staying power and sheer on-court intelligence to all his extraordinary natural attributes. As he showed in Rotterdam, routine brilliance may be an oxymoron, but it is also increasingly the best way to describe his game.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credit: Mike Frey-<em>USA TODAY Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a huge sporting weekend, not least because of the Super Bowl, it would be easy to overlook or at least underestimate the significance of Carlos Alcaraz\u2019s victory over Alex de Minaur in the final of the Rotterdam Open, even if it came at one of the longest-running and most storied of all European tournaments. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":993,"featured_media":63989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[18625,2715,259,2259,5729,4664,243,48],"class_list":["post-79538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp","category-featured","tag-abn-amro-open","tag-atp-rotterdam","tag-atp-tour","tag-atp-world-tour","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-rotterdam-open","tag-spanish-tennis","tag-tennis"],"modified_by":"Steen Kirby","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/993"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79538"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79601,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79538\/revisions\/79601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}