–Anindya Dutta
Thirty-seven days. That’s all it took Carlos Alcaraz to make the transition. Mental meltdown on the unforgiving red clay at Paris to the throes of ecstasy on the gentle grass at Wimbledon. Facing him, at both ends of that emotional rollercoaster, was Novak Djokovic.
On the ninth of June, at the post-match press conference, Djokovic had been the magnanimous winner, consoling a devastated 20-year-old. “I told him at the net, he knows how young he is,” said Djokovic. “He’s got plenty of time ahead of him – he’s going to win this tournament, I’m sure, many, many times.’
Thirty-seven days later, on grass, a surface where Alcaraz was playing only the fourth tournament of his young life, the tables had turned. Djokovic tried all the mind games he has employed against opponents over the years – the extended toilet break at a crucial juncture, the broken racquet, running the service clock down…But against Alcaraz’s mental fortitude, they all fell flat.
This time, Djokovic, the seven-time champion, was even more effusive in his praise: ‘I haven’t played a player like him ever, to be honest. I think people have been talking in the past 12 months or so about [Alcaraz’s] game consisting of certain elements from Roger, Rafa, and myself. I would agree with that. I think he’s got basically best of all three worlds.’ High praise indeed from one of the three greatest male tennis players of all time.
What changed in those thirty-seven days?
Alcaraz’s game did not improve beyond recognition. He was playing the backhand slice just as well when he was a precocious 13-year-old. That incredibly powerful forehand executed with perfect body balance and timing has been a feature of his game for a long time. Those astonishingly audacious lobs have stunned opponents for several years now.
And he certainly did not imbibe the best of the Big 3 in this timeframe. It took years of dedication, sacrifice, training and practice to develop the game we see today. Nor did Alcaraz miraculously discover the secret of beating Novak Djokovic over the past six weeks.
The secret of the transformation we saw this Sunday lies entirely within the six inches that separate the Alcaraz ears. And that, not the fact that he’s the youngest Wimbledon winner since Boris Becker in 1986, is the real story here.
Alcaraz had said after the semi-final loss at Roland Garros: ‘‘[It] has been really tough for me today. I have never felt something like I did today. Playing a semi-final of a grand slam, you have a lot of nerves, but even more with facing Novak. That’s the truth. It [my cramps] was a combination of a lot of things. But the main thing was the tension that I had in all the two first sets.”
Right after his loss, I wrote about mental pressure, and how physically debilitating it can be:
‘Alcaraz knew he could do it. He thought he would do it. But he could not do it. Pressure builds diamonds, he had reminded himself while sitting courtside. But now, for the first time in his life, Alcaraz realises that when pressure turns to anxiety, it triggers the fear of losing. And when that happens, body and mind seizes up. We let pressure build until it reaches panic levels, because of a future we allow our minds to imagine, rather than the present that is actually playing out.’
Alcaraz managed to turn it around in these 37 days, because he had learned his lesson well in Paris – let the future play out on court, not in your mind. And what accelerated it was the maturity he displayed by externalising his failing.
By putting that out in the open, Alcaraz reduced the chances of it constantly playing on his mind. As any mental conditioning coach will tell you, that is an extremely difficult thing to achieve.
Despite that step, it clearly wasn’t easy for him. At Centre Court, as he faced Djokovic, the mental hangover from Paris came back in force. Before you could say Carlos Alcaraz, he had lost the first set 1-6. Fans were already beginning to despair.
But as he took a breather between sets, Alcaraz recalled something Djokovic himself had spoken about a few months earlier. ‘It’s easy to say – stay in the moment. Our minds will always wander into the past and possible futures. What is important is how quick is your recovery back into the present. The players who recover fast, are the ones that are successful.’
There was also something else that happened away from the public eye. Having sorted his own mental issue, it was time to focus on the match. So, leading up to the final at SW19, the young Spaniard sought out one of the greatest players of all time and a brilliant student of the game – Martina Navratilova. He asked for advice on what would give him an edge over Djokovic. Her answer was key to what would happen next.
Navratilova advised him that Djokovic uses the dipping backhand slice to great effect against opponents. She knew Alcaraz’s shot was modelled on his opponent’s, but felt the youngster’s execution was even better. Use it frequently, and beat him at his own game, was her take, adding that she suspected he would not enjoy the experience, much less know what to do about it. Once again, it was a mental battle Navratilova was encouraging him to wage.
The first return from Alcaraz in the second set was a dipping backhand slice. Djokovic hit it into the net. Not once, but multiple times thereafter. He tried countering it with his own backhand slice. But as anyone who has played tennis will know, countering a good dipping slice with another, against the spin, is a very difficult shot to get right consistently. At his post-match speech Djokovic would ruefully admit: ‘He used my backhand slice against me.’
From that first point on, Alcaraz had an answer for whatever his opponent did. The frequent soft-handed drop shots were audacious; the viciously spinning lobs over Djokovic’s head, borderline insulting; the passing shots down the line jaw-dropping.
Light at the end of the Tunnel
What Alcaraz did over almost five hours of tennis is quite remarkable. It is not often that we manage to turn around our reaction to pressure in such a dramatic fashion as he achieved at Wimbledon. Federer, Nadal and Djokovic are all past masters at it. And that is a significant contributor to their greatness. The fact that he did it at his age on an unfamiliar surface against one of the greats of the game speaks volumes about his mental strength.
Alcaraz is 20. Two Grand Slam victories is far from a declaration of greatness. But what he has demonstrated over the past year, is that his arrival launches a season of hope.
Just as the Big 3 exit from the sport after two decades of dominance, the tunnel that fans and pundits despaired stretched into an eternity of darkness, has perhaps, just perhaps, switched on its proverbial light.