Alcaraz, in a white shirt, at 10 years old, along with Antonito López, the only player who beat him by a double 6-0 – Credits: @@Germán Abril
It’s hard to believe, but Carlos Alcaraz, the extraordinary number 2 in the world rankings and reigning Wimbledon champion, once lost 6-0 and 6-0. The 20-year-old Spaniard won 159 of the 203 matches he played on the ATP Tour, that is, an effectiveness of 78.3%. However, present at the ATP 250 in Buenos Aires, where the attempt to defend the title will begin this Thursday, he told an unpublished anecdote on the contest’s social networks that has him as the first seed.
“The room is the same.” Alcaraz, with LA NACION: his idea of how to continue being a small town boy, even though he is on top of the world
The Argentina Open content team’s question for Alcaraz was if he knew what it meant to “bike away” from a match. “I don’t use it, but I know what it means,” Carlitos responded, sympathetic. And he added, mentally traveling in time: “It’s when they beat you (or you win) 6-0 and 6-0. If it happened to me? Yes. Once, when I was 10 years old, they took me out on a bike. It was in a tournament in Murcia. He was a friend of Murcia. His name is Antonio López. Antonito, if you see this video, bastard…”
Alcaraz, posing for LA NACION, in the new entry to the BALTC – Credits: @Sergio Llamera
Two years older than Alcaraz, born in February 2001, Antonio López Sánchez, a native of Cartagena, a city in the Murcia region, beat Alcaraz in a tournament in Totana (Murcia), according to the Spanish journalist on his social networks. Germán Abril.
Quick reflexes, after Alcaraz’s statement, the Public Television of the Region of Murcia looked for the famous Antonito and interviewed him. “I knew that if one day they asked him he would say it, because he is very sincere,” Antonio López celebrated. And he expanded: “Having a friend remember you in that way is very nice. Every time we see each other, we talk about it, he reminds me of it and I have it recorded. Against Carlitos he played very well because he had a very clean game, he had a lot of talent. In the games we did thousands of drop shots. I couldn’t be more proud to have played with a kid like that. Now I can play paddle tennis against him, heh. “I don’t want revenge because he is going to give me my bike back.”
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The policeman who beat Federer 6-0 and 6-0
Alcaraz’s story recalled one very similar to what once happened to Roger Federer. At the age of ten, the Swiss master lost 6-0 and 6-0 against a boy almost three years older than him. His name was Reto Schmidli, who later, as an adult, ended up becoming a police officer in Basel.
The match was played on a clay court at the Grüssenhölzli club in Pratteln, a suburb of Basel. Schmidli, a promise from neighboring TC Arlesheim, far surpassed little Federer, an electric boy with a rebellious character from TC Old Boys in Basel. “Frankly, I never paid attention in the following years to that fact. Then a friend told me that Roger had given an interview, in which he was asked if he had ever lost 6-0 and 6-0. He responded that he had only happened to him once, in the Pratteln tournament, against me,” Schmidli once expressed.
His tennis career was relatively short. “My best ranking was number 40 in Switzerland. I started at a sports university, I started studying psychology, and then, as I was a fan of the series Columbo, I applied to join the police force and that’s how I continued.”
Alcaraz’s first rival, an Argentine
After passing the qualification, Camilo Ugo Carabelli (134th in the ranking, 24 years old) defeated the Peruvian Juan Pablo Varillas (85th) in the first round of the main draw by 7-6 (7-5) and 6-4, in 2h08m , and will be Carlitos Alcaraz’s rival in the round of 8 of the Argentina Open, this Thursday, not before 6:30 p.m.
2024-02-13 20:33:23
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