A year after angering his boss with a session in Ibiza, Carlos Alcaraz is at it again

Telegraph

7 hours ago

Carlos Alcaraz's reaction to winning the greatest tennis final ever played? A trip to Ibiza, several celebratory shots of alcohol, and at least one 'very late' night.
Arriving at Queen's Club on Sunday, a tanned and contented Alcaraz radiated Balearic vibes. He had just continued his annual tradition of nipping off to the Mediterranean after the clay-court season – a regular mini-break he described as a chance 'to turn off your mind a little bit'.
How beneficial or otherwise will this latest recharge be? We should find out on Tuesday, when Alcaraz faces the mercurial shot-making of his compatriot, Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.
Tennis tragics will remember that, 12 months ago, Alcaraz arrived here in a fug of exhaustion after a particularly vigorous Ibiza break. His Queen's title defence lasted just 99 minutes as he went down to Jack Draper in straight sets.
After that slip-up – which remains one of only three defeats that Alcaraz has suffered on grass – his own manager Albert Molina accused him of 'very selfish' behaviour by prioritising his own desires over his tennis preparations.
A year on, Alcaraz says he kept a lid on his recent party weekend, which he shared with the former Tottenham and Manchester United defender Sergio Reguilon among others.
'This year Ibiza was more chill,' Alcaraz, 22, said. 'Once I went to bed so late. Obviously I did some shots as well, but nothing more than that. Honestly, I rested a lot, physically and mentally. But I had fun, a nice three days. It was more than enough.'
The ill-feeling around 2024's trip became a major plot point in Netflix's fly-on-the-wall documentary Carlos Alcaraz: My Way. As his coach Juan Carlos Ferrero told the cameras: 'I think it's great to disconnect but a part of your mind needs to remember you're a tennis player. He lost really quickly, and there's talk that he shouldn't have gone to Ibiza, he should have trained.'
And yet, the clue lies in the title of that otherwise humdrum series: My Way. For Alcaraz, his way involves stopping to smell the roses – or, alternatively, down the tequila slammers – whenever he is not flogging his opponents around the four corners of the court.
Neither was Queen's the biggest of deals. Whatever Ferrero might have thought about 2024's first-round defeat – which found Alcaraz in such a bedraggled state that one wondered if he was still hungover – normal service soon resumed.
Less than a month after losing to Draper, Alcaraz produced arguably his most ruthless performance to overcome Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon trophy match. In five grand-slam finals to date – all of which Alcaraz has won – it was his only straight-setter.
The moral of the story should be clear. Do not try to cage Alcaraz's inner tiger. Tennis is at its best when presenting a variety of game styles, and he is such a creative and romantic character that he brings multiple personalities to the court on his own.
Alcaraz can hit through you with sheer power, or he can bewilder you with his touch shots. He can perform defensive miracles or serve you off the court (even if this last incarnation is extremely rare, having only been spotted during that Wimbledon final last year).
Add in the contrast between Alcaraz's unpredictability and Jannik Sinner's one-note efficiency, and you end up with miracles like the final they played in Paris a week ago. All the statistics suggest that this extraordinary five-and-a-half hour epic achieved a greater cut-through than anything tennis has produced in the Instagram age.
Yet there is no doubt that most neutrals were pulling for Alcaraz. That is why he is so valuable: the sport's new golden goose. As John McEnroe put it last week: 'Carlos is the best gift the post-Big Three generation could give us. And he's the only tennis player I'd pay a ticket for.'
The danger is that we burn Alcaraz out before his time, because he is not as much of a monomaniac as Sinner or Djokovic. And while Alcaraz's manager Molina might have publicly queried his commitment, Molina has his own case to answer. He surely played a part in the numerous unofficial exhibition matches that Alcaraz signed up to last year, including the 'Netflix Slam' in Las Vegas and the 'Six Kings Slam' in Saudi Arabia.
Given that Alcaraz seems to miss events with injury each year – including a forearm strain in the spring of 2024 and an adductor problem in April – Molina must bear his own responsibility, not only to his client but to the game as a whole.
Someone should be encouraging Alcaraz to forego these diversions, no matter how lucrative they might be. He has already earned around £33 million in prize money from the official tour, even before you factor in endorsement deals. As his own mother Virginia put it in My Way: 'I don't want my son to turn into a worn-out toy later on.'
Still, no matter how many potholes Alcaraz may yet encounter, we will always have Paris. 'I still watch it sometimes,' Alcaraz explained on Sunday, when asked about the French Open final. 'I still don't believe that I come back from that moment [when he faced three match points in the fourth set].'
As he added, with his trademark boyish smile: 'A lot of people told me that it was the best final they have ever seen.'