One hundred and sixty-one days after winning her first Grand Slam at the 2022 US Open, Murcian Carlos Alcaraz Garfia won the title once again in the Buenos Aires tournament, the first of 2023, that’s exactly where the new season premiered after two injuries. With his hard and strong tennis, El Palmar player defeated British Cameron Norrie in two sets (6-2 and 7-5), achieving the seventh success of his sports career and the first place in Argentina, where he had never played before. On the clay of the track named after the legendary Guillermo Vilas, it was packed once again to see the two favorites in action to take the victory.
The youngest player to get there by force and through the front door started the race to save the world’s number one player. He is now 590 behind Novak Djokovic, making up for it with 250 wins in Argentina, 500 corresponding to the Rio de Janeiro tournament he will play since yesterday. The Serb, who would reclaim first place if Murcian wins in Rio and reappear in Dubai on 27 February after a victory at the Australian Open, was eliminated before the semi-finals there. Two injuries are behind. The first is in the abdomen, where he lived in the Paris-Bercy quarter-finals at the beginning of November; the second, in the semimembranosus muscle of his right leg just before his trip to Australia last January, forced him to change all his plans again.
Alcaraz has gone from less to more during this ATP 250. In the second round, he began to suffer against Serbian Laslo Djere, who had lost his only set during the week. However, he warmed up against Dusan Lajovic and developed a multi-carat game against Bernabé Zapata in the semi-finals. In the final, he gave continuity to that fluid tennis full of resources. to beat the world number 12 he had faced four times before and lost the last time their faces were seen.
Alcaraz, the favorite of the Argentine people, made a show from the very first moment. Sent the first case in just 36 minutes, He managed to break the tie in the seventh game with a timeout, which he won with the solvency and repeated in the ninth game, and won 6-3.
In the second set, the superiority of Juan Carlos Ferrero’s lead student became even clearer, and after a timeout in the second game he had to grit his teeth to save a point that was difficult for him in the third set. But once again, world No. 2, who has been number one for 20 weeks, has decided to hit a clear 3-0 on solvency. Norrie didn’t put his arms down and had more confidence in his serve from then on, burying Alcaraz in the back of the court, with Alcaraz already in control of a game that was already on his way with his serve. The man from El Palmar tied Game seven with a 5-2 serve, but the Johannesburg-born Briton resisted and finished 5-3 in a desperate attempt to comeback. In Game ninth, the first opportunity to seal the win, Alcaraz found itself back 0-30 after two mandatory errors, and Norrie found two breakouts at 15-40. He saved the first with his right cross to the line but his double mistake gave life to Norrie and his serve, who went to 4-5.
The excitement increased in the tenth game, Norrie equalized the second set after two games where Alcaraz (5-5) made a lot of mistakes in his desire to close the game as soon as possible. With four good first serves, Murcian put on a game where he built up the tension, thus ensuring at least sudden death (6-5). The Briton had the opportunity to take the match to a ‘tie break’, but with his serve – he made a double mistake – he lost the efficiency of the others. And with the first advantage in the ‘duo’ and a spectacular fall, Alcaraz sealed his victory at the ATP 250 in Buenos Aires, the seventh title of his sports career despite being only 19 years old. The first was at Umag in 2021 and added Rio de Janeiro, Miami, Barcelona, Madrid and the US Open in 2022.
After the win, Alcaraz opened: “A special moment for me. I’ve had bad times over the last four months, I didn’t do the right thing off track, and I felt a little guilty after the injury. It is not easy to fight against it. “Coming here, this is my first tournament in four months, and winning my first title since the US Open is really special for me.”
The world’s number 554 Brazil’s first opponent at the Rio Open this week
The unnamed tennis player, ranked 554th in the world, Brazilian Mateus Alves will be Carlos Alcaraz’s first opponent at next week’s ATP 500 Rio Open in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). . . Alves, who has the best rank of 395 in his sports career, should not cause much trouble for the world number 2 who re-emerged in Buenos Aires after more than a hundred days of inactivity and made it to the final.
Carlos Alcaraz will defend the title he won in the same tournament a year ago in Rio de Janeiro. In the second round, he will face the winner of the as yet undecided duel between the Italian Fabio Fognini and a player from the previous one. In the same part of the draw, Diego Schwartzman, whom he defeated Laslo Djere and Dusan Lajovic in Argentina this week, will face in the quarter-finals is also included. In the semi-finals, Italian Lorenzo Musetti, Spaniard Pedro Martínez, Chilean Cristian Garin, Peruvian Juan Pablo Varillas, who were semi-finalists in Buenos Aires, Argentine Thomaz Bellucci, who was 21st in the world but now occupy 917, and Argentina’s Sebastian Baez (36).
On the other side of the draw, his opponent in the final in Buenos Aires, British Cameron Norrie, takes second place. Spaniards Albert Ramos, Jaume Munar, Bernabé Zapata and Roberto Carballés, Argentinean Pedro Cachin, Tomas Martín Etcheverry and Francisco Cerundolo, Brazilian Thiago Monteiro and Joao Fonseca, Slovakian Alex Moldan, Austrian Dominic Thiem, Portuguese Joao Sousa and Bolivian Hugo Dellien, among others , is also featured at the end of the Rio Open draw.