The chronicler travels to 2005 and recovers that match between Rafael Nadal and Alexander Waske on the grass of Halle.
Two weeks earlier, the man from Manacor had won the first of his 14 titles at Roland Garros, he was already a colossus on the ground, but on the grass he lost his way: he skidded and couldn’t hit the bounce or the acceleration of the grass, and for that reason He was going to be the victim of the German, a low tennis profile (147th) who, in the future, would not take off.
Who would have thought then that that teenager Nadal, overwhelmed on the grass, would end up adding two titles at Wimbledon, in 2008 and 2010, thus extending his talent to any surface.
(…)
At times, the chronicler who was watching the duel between Carlos Alcaraz and Arthur Rinderknech on the grass at Queen’s on Tuesday believed he saw some parallels between that Nadal lost on the grass and this Alcaraz.
Alcaraz suffered and slipped, and seemed not to understand the speed of the game on grass, nothing to do with the pause on clay. And, confused as he was, he had seen the eyes of the dragon in the first set, before recovering and correcting the march: much improved later, he won the other two sets, knocked down the Frenchman and accelerated in the British countryside: growing exponentially , he did not give up another set in the entire tournament and, to the surprise of the tennis community, he took Lehecka, Dimitrov, Korda and De Miñaur ahead.
And then, when asked about his references on green grass, a tiny phase of the season (it barely lasts a month) that hardly anyone prepares (there are very few grass courts in the world), the Murcian said:
–I usually study my rivals. But I want to learn from the best and that’s why I’ve been watching videos of Murray and Federer. I think they are the ones that move best on this surface and I want to be like them. I don’t think about Djokovic that much because he slides like on clay.
Alcaraz’s leap in quality on grass is manna for illusion: it has allowed him to regain the ATP lead on the eve of Wimbledon, which starts this weekend.