The afternoon goes by at RCTB and the fan doesn’t know where to look, since a handful of interesting things are happening at the same time.
A part of the parish takes its head out on track 2, and thus checks what the good of Jannik Sinner (20), an ice cream player who plays doubles with Alex de Minaur and whose future, experts point out, is doing will offer excellent matches against Carlos Alcaraz.
Others go to the Andrés Gimeno court, full to overflowing, to see Francis Tiafoe (25): the colossal American, son of a Sierra Leonean worker who had given up his life to open the doors of tennis in his son, is now feeling the weight of tradition.
Tiafoe and Taylor Fritz are the representatives of the new American generation: they are the heirs of Connors, McEnroe, Aggasi, Courier, Sampras or Roddick.
And that weighs.
(Despite his generous effort, Tiafoe compromises against Emil Ruusuvuori).
7,800 more spectators stop at the Rafael Nadal court. The plenum is absolute, an exceptional fact in the tournament, since it is Tuesday, not Wednesday.
And Murcia is a magnet.
Murcia is a magnet, and the chronicler takes note from the start. Alcaraz is fire, and his string of possibilities stuns Nuno Borges (26), a timid opponent who oscillates between the ATP circuit and the Challenger tournaments and who is now seen swimming against the current.
-If I have developed something in the last year it is maturity. We have been working so that he does not mislead me – said Alcaraz a few days ago.
He was referring to the pause in the committed moments.
– Now I read better – he said.
And the chronicler warns this, he understands that Alcaraz reads the matches better.
(This is the only way to understand that he has settled in the world top 3, today as number 2, and has appropriated two of the four tournaments he has contested this 2023).
Alcaraz moves like a cat, is elastic and solid at the same time, and answers the Portuguese’s challenge with a whip. An ace, a drop, a parallel forehand that silences Borges and shakes the parish.
-If things get complicated, I think of doing magic in the next point -he reveals now, after his triumph.
Alcaraz tempers when he plays, and even so he keeps the tension high, and in just 34 minutes he has already dispatched the first set. This, an instant, is the time it has taken Borges to understand what this is all about.
He will no longer be able to overcome this commitment.
And everything has gone so quickly that the chronicler puts himself in perspective and recovers the adventures of Alcaraz last year. His first title in Barcelona, ​​that of 2022, had its servitudes. Kwon, Tsitsipas and De Minaur had complicated his life, or perhaps he had complicated it himself, numb as he was about to win a Pulitzer at every turn, still too audacious, still too young.
Now, Alcaraz reads things.
I do not hesitate.
-Connors said the other day that, if you continue to play with this intensity, you will not reach the age of 25 – they tell him.
-The handbrake? – asks Alcaraz. I don’t wear it on the track and I don’t plan to wear it. That’s my style of play. I do not know. Maybe my body wears out more, but I know my body and my physical capacity well. And I know I will recover well. And if problems arise, then they are controlled.
Roberto Bautista is waiting for him tomorrow, Wednesday.
