Carlos Alcaraz won the 2024 Roland Garros, but the final was far from a perfect match as much as the conclusion looked like it.
In the third set of the 2024 French Open final, the young Spaniard was outmaneuvering one of the best players in the world, Alexander Zverev. There was intense battling, but overall, Alcaraz was clearly outplaying his opponent in the third set.
However, then, he lost 5 games in a row, seemingly out of nowhere. That’s atypical for any player, let alone one of the best players in the world, like Alcaraz. It was perplexing even to his coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, who admitted to Eurosport that he had no idea what happened.
Alcaraz didn’t seem bothered by an injury, though he did require a medical timeout for his leg during the match, but that was later, during the fourth set. He simply lost focus and played a terrible few games.
“I really don’t know what happened in the third set because it seems to me that all was under control. But at the end, I think he got too much tensions on his legs on his arms, and thinking too much about winning the match. And he needed to lose that set to start over and stay calm and start to play his real level.”
Still, the way the Spaniard refocused after that dropped set was very impressive. Zverev helped with a bit of tension from his side as well, but for the most part, Alcaraz handled those final two sets about as well as you can hope from any player, let alone a 21-year-old.
The reward for all of that was winning the trophy, his third Grand Slam overall, and certainly not the last one he would ever win.
