This happens each time Carlos Alcaraz steps on the court. One outrageously crazy moment where he does something that folks who’ve been watching tennis for many years swear on the lifetime of their favorite doubles partner they’ve never seen before.
And they’re probably right, because at the same time as Alcaraz has struggled (for him) over the past six months, experiencing some version of a sophomore slump, Alcaraz has never failed to provide spectacular things.
On Sunday, in the course of the final of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, that moment got here just over halfway through the primary set against Daniil Medvedev.
A superbly placed lob from short distance found Alcaraz, who approached the online. At first he thinks he can jump back and hit him, but halfway through the maneuver he realizes he has to show around, jump and chase him, which he does just before he lands on the purple hard court for the second time.
And that is where Alcaraz-of-it-all really comes into its own. At the last moment he realizes that due to the best way he holds the racket within the forehand grip, he cannot get under the ball. At this point, almost everyone who has ever played this for a living makes a desperate shot and the ball flies across the bottom and into the online. This is not the case with Alcaraz.
In a split second, he makes a tiny twist of his wrist and swings the ball with what is, at that moment, the back of his strings.
The affair continues and a number of shots later he hits a forehand down the road as Medvedev watches as he whistles.
And identical to that, tennis was getting back to where it was last summer, and Alcaraz staked his claim on the current and way forward for the sport, leaving his opponent rising with every shot, winning the title, watching the last mistake walk off the court, after which hugging his father and coach tennis player Juan Carlos Ferrero and his real father as hundreds of fans bathe him in roars of adulation.
Hours later, with the big glass trophy next to him after a 7-6(5), 6-1 triumph, Alcaraz was unable to elucidate what happened after that small, first-point miracle.
“Something happened to my feet and I couldn’t jump,” he said. “When something like that happens, you have to throw one more ball and just run to the next one.”
Alcaraz has repeatedly said over the past two weeks that the past few months have been difficult for him. Losing was actually strange, however the fundamental problem was that when he stepped on the court, whether for training or competition, he struggled to seek out the enjoyment he all the time felt when he had a racket in his hand. His family and coaches asked him what happened.
He had no answers for them, which in a way made it worse. When he sprained his ankle in Rio last month, he was as little as he had been because the starting of his profession.

(Buda Mendes/Getty Images)
For almost 200 years, and possibly longer, people have been coming to California to start out over, renew their identities, or try to seek out their old, true ones. And that is just about what happened to Alcaraz over the past two weeks within the Coachella Valley.
The boy got here back, and when he did, the show gained momentum once more, and never more so than in those crazy moments of sprinting, wrist-flapping and passing lines in the primary set that sent the 16,000-strong crowd onto the court for the primary time. shawl.
“Points like this give me extra motivation to put a smile on my face,” he said with a smile on his face.
This was going to occur soon. Alcaraz is just too talented and too committed to the game to permit this eight-month title drought to proceed for much longer. Why would the course of his early profession be different than at this stage?
Just as the primary whispers of doubt were emerging, as his close friend and rival Jannik Sinner played his game for supremacy, Alcaraz got here to life. Here he defeated Sinner within the semifinals, ending the Italian’s 19-game winning streak, after which gained revenge on Medvedev, who ended his try to defend his title on the US Open in September, when the fallow period was just starting.
Alcaraz is incredibly resilient, especially when there is a top-tier fan on the pitch, as was the case on Sunday within the desert. Rod Laver, Maria Sharapova and actors Charlize Theron, Zendaya and Tom Holland were there. When Alcaraz takes the court, especially in the ultimate, a tennis match becomes an event, and for the primary few years he almost all the time delivered results. When that stopped during the last eight months, something began to feel incorrect within the tennis universe.
Not any more. The victory gave Alcaraz a second consecutive title in a tournament that many players and far of the industry consider a very powerful non-Grand Slam tournament. It was the thirteenth title in a profession that is just getting began, even when the following time he reaches the highest of the game’s rankings (which might be soon) might be his second attempt at the highest spot. In 2022, on the age of 19, he became the youngest player in history to top the rankings.

(Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
After it was over, Medvedev sat within the locker room along with his coach Gilles Cervara, told him he didn’t regret the afternoon and asked Cervara if he did. A shot or two here and there, Cervara said, but that one was on an Alcaraz racket.
Medvedev said that when Alcaraz raised his level in the primary set, it was him “I kind of managed to be there and try to catch his level, but I was a little bit lower. Eventually the pit went down, down, down, and he went up, up, up.”
On Sunday, Alcaraz wasn’t alone in putting the world back to rights. In the ladies’s final, Iga Świątek defeated Maria Sakkari to win her second Indian Wells title in three years. Świątek won 6:4, 6:0, defeating probably the most successful Greek player with incredible efficiency, which has turn out to be her trademark. And Świątek, being Świątek, won no less than one set of pure domination – the second-set “bagel” that so often adds an exclamation point to a lot of her victories.
Swiatek, 22, who has won 4 Grand Slams but none since June, showed her resilience last fall after losing the highest spot within the rankings she had held for 76 weeks. At the top of the season she regained the advantage, but in the beginning of the Australian Open she stumbled, and after a fast attack by Aryna Sabalenka, Świątek’s supremacy seemed at risk. There was more reason to be nervous when her Indian Wells adventure began ten days ago.
She opened against Danielle Collins, who almost defeated her in Australia. Then got here Linda Noskova, a young Czech woman who sent her home to Melbourne. Collins got three games. Noskova got 4. They each endured the bagel of the second set.
When Świątek won here two years ago and accomplished the “Sunshine Double” with victory on the Miami Open two weeks later, it was a breakthrough moment for her. The clay court tennis champion suddenly proved to herself that she could win on the hard court.
“This time I’m just very happy with my work,” Świątek said.
Her opponents, not a lot. They know she turned her dominance and efficiency into a method that resulted in a 19-4 record within the finals and 6 straight wins in the ultimate match because she has loads of energy in her reserves.

(Robert Prange/Getty Images)
“I’ve played against bigger players, but at the same time she takes up your time,” Sakkari said. “It took me a few games to get used to her timing.”
For all the opposite women, the scary thing is that there are still three weeks left until the sweetest moment of the Christmas season, the swing on clay courts. In the past, stepping onto the red clay was like coming home, and he or she looked forward to it.
“It doesn’t really matter now,” she said, barely moved.
In Alcaraz’s case, flexibility often manifests itself in the shape of small miracles, which he manages to perform greater than anyone else. Medvedev, who could make a number of moves now and again, knows what effect they’ll have after they achieve something.
“You feel like, OK, you can do more and more and hit harder and hit faster and get better,” he said.
And so it happened because the match moved into the second set and its seemingly inevitable conclusion. At times, the balls off Alcaraz’s racket looked as if it would defy the laws of physics, retaining their speed from the moment they were launched until they bounced off Medvedev’s eyes or flew past him.
Medvedev hit the ball time and again, and Alcaraz sent it back with no problem.
“I make one good shot, I get in trouble and I lose the point,” Medvedev said. “It’s difficult. Mentally it’s not easy to play against it.

No one knows this better than Alcaraz. From a distance of 25 meters, it is not difficult to see how the enemy’s shoulders slump, his spirit breaks, and his head shakes with astonishment and helplessness.
Nothing helps you both in the moment and in the long run like a little magical thinking and striking. That crazy series of shots as the tension mounted was good for the game, both for him and the wider game, he said, and more importantly, good for his soul.
“I always say I play better with a smile on my face,” he said. “Scores like this don’t matter whether I win or lose, they still put a smile on my face. I think it helps me continue to improve my match play and show my best tennis.
Smart money says Alcaraz’s best tennis is yet to come.