Sitting in front of the press, Nadal and Djokovic no longer speak for themselves: they talk about Carlos Alcaraz

At the end of February I went to ask Toni Nadal:

How do you see Carlos Alcaraz?

– He’s a clear contender for first place. He will have to compete against Medvedev or Zverev. If anything, it would be easier for him.

-…?

The Big Three will be missing…

(at that moment, Charlie Brown He was 29th in the world. And his game, wild and imaginative, lacks the last boil)

The karez explosion breaks the slits of the suit we’ve been wearing for over fifteen years

(…)

From that conversation, I picked up the final reflection: “The Big Three are going to lose…”.

The explosion of the karez broke the slits of the suit we’ve been wearing for over fifteen years. The a teenager He’s already here and not only have the Big Three left, but they plan to fight him. Roger Federer is set to return to the scene this summer (Wimbledon, his garden, shown on the horizon) and Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic view the guns at Foro Italico, the spectacle of the impending Masters 1000 in Rome.

Today, both Nadal and Djokovic present scenes that were unimaginable at another time. They sit in front of the press, not talking about themselves, but about the third party. They answer the Carraz:

“Sure, Alcaraz is special,” says Djokovic.

What Carlos didn’t surprise me at all because he’s nothing new. I’m happy for him, everyone knows what level of tennis he can reach – says Nadal.

do you see.

Both of them before disdain, swallowed hard. Even now, for over fifteen years, Djokovic and Nadal (and also Federer) have been heroes in their conversations with the press. We asked them how they feel in tennis, in their inner selves, in their maturation process, in their future.

It happened every time we talked to one of them, as well as when we chatted with one of their competitors.

David Ferrer appeared on the scene, or Stan Wawrinka, or Dominic Thiem, or Marcos Baghdatis, and we asked any of them about Nadal.

We were interested in their opinion of the other, not their opinion of themselves.

Now, everything is different. they are members The Big Three (and the whole world of tennis in general) who has to answer for the other, the newcomer, the puppy rummaging in the shoe drawer.

Legends take their medicine.

This is the moment when their resilience is tested: Nadal, Djokovic and Federer witness the emergence of a new genius, an unapologetic tennis player guided not by an opponent’s lineage, but by his own abilities.

In a flash, Alcaraz circumvented the group of contenders for the throne (Zverev, Tsitsipas, Auger-Alisim, Rublev, Beretini; only Medvedev resisted) to position himself there, inhaling Novama.

– What I see is that I still have five tennis players in front of me – says Alcaraz, day six is ​​a racket.

Speak with freshness a teenager about the son who was ready to overthrow his father (“I haven’t played with my father for a long time, but now I think he will not beat me,” he cheerfully told us in an interview, a little later a year ago now) and to anyone who stands before him: “I understood that Tsitsipas has Problems running forward, so I punished him with drops; he said in Barcelona two weeks ago, because I think I have a good drop, right?

What’s Next?

They waited for the answer of the Big Three, those men who crushed all the rebellions, one by one, until today.