“When Alcaraz was eight years old, I told my people I was going to be a tennis player and be one of the greats.”

When did you join the sport?

I started playing tennis when I was four or five because my dad was the caretaker of the Country Club, we lived there and tennis was everywhere. He lived in the club until he was 25 years old.

What kind of player was he?

I played well but had no luck with the sponsors. I trained with Almagro when his coach was Antonio González Palencia. I played Rafa Nadal in juniors when Rafa Nadal was already world champion and I had two match points against him at the Spanish Championship in Alicante. That’s when a member of the club, the owner of Pollos Juan Pujante, was very interested in sponsoring me, but in the end there was no deal. That’s why my coach Carlos Alcaraz Sr. and from then on I played very well in teams, second place by ensembles with Nicolás Almagro and in Europe. But when I was a little discouraged when I was 16-17, I broke up with him because it was too expensive, so when I started training Carlos, the first thing I did was call Postres Reina as a sponsor.

Did you find what you were looking for as a coach early?

He was already teaching at the age of 17. Also, I don’t know if it’s because I played with Rafa and Nico and was more or less successful, I had a lot to do with a lot of lessons from the very beginning. I have been teaching for nearly 20 years.

And he continues to teach at the Country Club.

Yes, always. I continue to teach Carlos Alcaraz for a year and a half when I am not with him, although I give other lessons when I do not have to train Carlos Alcaraz in quotation marks. till the end.

Why did you start training Carlos Alcaraz?

There was a band at the club with him and two other kids, and one of them, Pedro Cobacho, played very well. They had a coach named Carlos Santos, but one day Carlos Alcaraz Sr. he told me about a trip to Croatia where the boy had a place to play at the U-10 World Cup. He was 9 years old and I started talking to Alfonso of Desserts Reina about financing the trip. Daddy said if he succeeds, I should go with him. And indeed I spoke to Alfonso, he financed the trip and Carlos was second in the world. On the way back, my father had me train that group, but I focused more on Carlos Alcaraz. I was with him from the age of 9 to almost 17.

Also, Carlos started to stand out very quickly.

Yes, in fact, I always say that everything started on that journey. He did it for the first time outside of Spain, he finished second in the U-10 world, and on the way back we started playing the Nike Junior Tour, which is now the Rafa Nadal Circuit, and he did it here for the first time. Madrid, the freshman junior, won. He also won in Valencia, and at that time we had a more serious contract with Sweets Reina because the boy stood out. The other day, when I was 12 years old, I saw a video that a Tarbes tournament student sent me and I played forehand, backhand, drop shot, vole like now…

I remember a report I made about him as he joined Tarbes.

Yes, we had two years and he was in the last 16 in one and the other quarter, but I have a feeling we’ve been talking a lot about this tournament and so he might be under some pressure. For the rest, there wasn’t a week where I didn’t play the semi-finals or the finals and look, I traveled with Carlos. These things caused him trouble with a girlfriend who told him the tournament was tough and we’d be back on Wednesday or Thursday, but then we had to stay until Sunday.

What is special about him?

The fact that he loves big stages and big challenges, that he likes to play with a lot of people in places like Caja Mágica, and to play in a sport that is as psychological and difficult as this, means that he is and will be number one. . One of the things I did with him as a kid was motivation, which improved him a lot. He was a very gifted kid and sometimes had to work a little hard to get it to work, but I remember very few finals where he lost to him on big challenges. I remember seeing him hit the ball with his father when I was just four years old, a boy almost not hitting the ball from court to court. It was an incredible thing.

Is it difficult or easy to find talent from them?

This one in particular was easy to spot, but one in a million. Perhaps this turned out too quickly, as with Rafa. It’s not a discovery for me because when I was eight years old I told my people that Carlos was going to be a tennis player. No matter how little he understood tennis, it was seen that he would be one of the good ones. Today I’m sure it will be number one. You can spot a kid who can play well and has qualities like his current little brother that people ask me about, but he can’t be compared to Carlitos because there won’t be another Carlos.

Are comparisons with Rafa Nadal harmful to him?

He passes these comparisons because we have told him to pass many times. There was a time when he was younger, we asked not to be asked in interviews about Rafa, which Ferrero also disliked. But in the end Rafa, Rafa and Carlos, Carlos. Everyone has a career, but everything seems like Carlos will be almost as good as Rafa’s.

As a coach, where do you think the key to being a tennis player is?

There must be a lot of situations. Carlos, for example, takes all the perfect steps. Assuming the child is technically and mentally fit, parents should be willing to make sacrifices and give tennis as much importance as practice. There’s also the fundamental money, but also the injuries and the pressure that a lot of people leave tennis for because of it. Today we have an example of women who left early, like Barty or Azarenka.

But it’s hard for another Carlos Alcaraz to stay on track and not come for economic reasons.

Complicated. In his time Carlos Desserts would have been a tennis player if he wasn’t behind Reina, but we don’t know at what pace and effort parents should have. If we hadn’t traveled this much and always well, things would have been complicated. And these things are remarkable because it’s not the same thing when you go to a tournament and you can’t even have a half-decent meal because kids tend to be very sensitive when they’re little, like Carlitos are. . I remember a tournament in Casablanca in a mid-luxury area where the hotel food was not good, we spent the whole week going to a Spanish pizzeria because we could afford it, something not everyone could do. In Futures, I’ve seen people sleeping in vans, run-down hotels, or stealing rackets to make money. These are the things that happen in tennis. In addition to this, Carlos has always been lucky to have a team above him as well as having a family connected to tennis. And then, when I was 15 and the tennis scene had shrunk a little because I was alone with the kid and there was no one around to train, Ferrero showed up. He spoke to the manager Juan Carlos, we took him to the academy for a few hours and he had the opportunity to train with quality people there. I realized that to be the person Carlos would be, everything had to be perfect. Although he spent some time resolving with abdominal problems, there was no injury.

Does Carlos have weak points?

Well, I don’t know what to say to you. The worst thing he had and improved a lot was his service and he proved mentally on par with the others. I’m a little skeptical about the print, but that will be seen in the coming months or year.

Don’t you want to go too fast with him?

But mostly for people.

And you don’t think it will work? defeat at Monte Carlo?

What I am clear is that he will make a very good Godó, because at the club that signed him, where he loves to play, all family and friends will go and the stands will be full from the first minute.

do you have more talent Region of Murcia?

There’s a good quarry and the Country Club has two or three kids from his brother Jaime’s farm who would be very good. Things have always been done at a high level here, but we don’t need to compare anyone with Carlitos because there won’t be anyone like him for many years. I hope I’m wrong but I’m telling you no.

What influences these children who came to the fore when they were young?

The main thing is that parents are willing to take some risks because you can’t be a tennis player playing two days a week. You don’t need to go crazy, but you need to train harder, combine tennis well with practice, and have the teachers help. The key then is to customize the training a bit more, which requires an economic expense so your child can train more at a private level with a coach, which is key.

In the end, a lot comes down to money.

No, I can’t take all the money. I remember a kid Carlos Alcaraz’s father trained, his father had a lot of money, bet on and leveled up a lot with, but he didn’t come close to being a tennis player because it’s too complicated. If you don’t have something innate, it’s very difficult.

For a tennis player, he must have an impressive team of coaches behind him, and that is very costly.

That’s true, but it’s also one of the few sports where you pay is the boss, and that’s why there are so many divorces and so many fights in tennis. That’s why it’s so important to have two coaches to travel in tennis, as Juan Carlos and I did for a while, and not have the same person always be there 24 hours a day and give you the badge. Carlitos is a very good boy and Ferrero is a very serious man, but no one can rule out that tomorrow a spark might fly between the two of them and the relationship, like all couples, will burn. They are logical things. For me, one of the things Toni Nadal always told me and I always work with Carlos is motivation. We’ve always negotiated things. For example, if I met her on a Saturday afternoon and she said she wanted to go with her friends, I would ask her to tell me the right time and then let her go. You must have a strong hand, but always with some compassion, empathy.

When I didn’t see Carlos motivated, I was always very supportive of stopping for three or four days and sending him home, but within 24 hours he called me and said he was there to train. Seeing the quality it has, I was not afraid of making less watches, but the watches we made had to be of good quality.

It’s just that many people run out at an early age.

I’ve seen a lot of crap out there, people running the kids for two hours the morning before a game where we just rally for an hour. So many of them burn out or have a knee or spinal cord injury at the age of 15 or 16, it’s a wreck. There are other people who have to work hard and become tennis players, but when you see someone doing it well for the first time, what I want from you is to be mentally fresh and willing. Of course, it is a sport that lasts for hours, but you have to be careful not to burn the children.