He yesterday’s match between Nadal and BlanchIt was a day of youth and today, that of Alcaraz and Shevchenko, was one to remember. Tennis, like all sports, was invented for happiness, for the well-being of people. To have a good time. Manolo Santana and Ion Tiriac conceived the Mutua Madrid Open as a party.
Alcaraz beats Shevchenko and is already in the third round of MadridAP
They and their generation companions played as they lived: as artists who enjoyed what they did and thus drew shapes and lines of paint on the courts. Give Pollock music from Shocking Blue to Los Bravos. Carlos Alcaraz seems to have inherited that spirit. He still has the defect of finding it difficult to win when he doesn’t play well. But when he feels good, when His body expression denotes happiness, Carlos Alcaraz plays well. And he wins. Almost always.
Carlos Alcaraz has something of an old tennis player. Of an artist. He has unpredictable blows. He doesn’t follow any script. Watching his game means not knowing what you’re going to see, but I know you’re going to have fun. And people know it. The stands and boxes of the Mutua, full on a Friday at four in the afternoon, burst into applause. In faces that turned to the neighbor in the seat with smiles from ear to ear and lip reading of “Have you seen? Huh?”.
And on the track a Carlos with a shaved neck, a compression sleeve on his arm, linked blows of fantasy because those who were not were also considered such. Maybe like a Santana or a Rosewall of the 21st century would have done. Playing with fantasy, but at full speed, with a lighter racket and a faster ball. The public appreciates that a match is more than just an artillery duel.
And yes, two play. Shevchenko, a Kazakh tennis player who, when last year he was at the Open Comunidad de Madrid, Challenger ATP – which he won – was still Russian, He also joined the ‘vintage’ by claiming the Hawkeye, just as Nastase did his ancestor, the Cyclops of Wimbledon. (“That machine is a communist!!!”, he shouted when a service was bad for him). There was little else he could do besides listen to the ‘Davai, Davai’ (the Russian ‘Let’s go’) that his wife, Potapova, threw him from the stands. The public also appreciated that he fulfilled his role.
And finally. Alcaraz was not only enjoyed by people with tickets to the Manolo Santana Stadium. In the morning, their training was equally packed as all the outside courts. A legend of La Caja Mgica is that people don’t go ‘to see tennis’ but to see stars. And they keep saying it, you see…
