Carlos Alcaraz put in an uninspired display yesterday at Wimbledon, as he faltered to a five-set win over the retiring Fabio Fognini.
In his first match back, the two-time defending champion looked sluggish throughout, making a string of uncharacteristic errors that allowed the Italian to maintain a foothold in the match.
And, despite twice taking a one-set lead, he was pegged back on both occasions and forced to finish his four-hour and 38-minute clash in the fifth set.
Pundit Catherine Whitaker has scrambled for answers to explain such a dire performance, and seemingly found one as she noticed an interesting gesture made by Carlos Alcaraz in the fourth set.
Carlos Alcaraz appeared to be struggling physically
Speaking on The Tennis Podcast, the trio sought to review Alcaraz’s underwhelming first-round win, with Whitaker particularly critical.
However, she did afford him some leeway based on what she saw in the fourth set, recalling: ‘I think that being in awe of Fognini, which really struck and surprised me as well. I think that prevented him, and credit to Alcaraz for this, from really explaining how much he was feeling it out there.
‘That’s why I was doing the questions about nerves in the press, because I thought he was really feeling it physically today, whether it was an illness, whether it was stress-related, it doesn’t matter.
‘You know, think about how [Jack] Draper’s stress manifested so badly in the heat at the US Open. And where does stress and anxiety end and heat stroke begin? Like, who knows?
‘I thought there was a point in the fourth set at a sit-down where he was sort of making a vomiting gesture towards his box. I could be wrong about that, but that’s what it looked like to me.
‘And he looked spacey for the whole match to me. He looked spaced out, and he was getting the ice towel every sit down. So yeah, whatever you want to call it, he clearly wasn’t physically all there today,’
However, she did reserve some harsh words on Alcaraz’s performance, particularly in that fourth set: ‘Honestly, the end of that set was some of the worst tennis I’ve ever seen from a professional tennis player. Yeah. It was extraordinarily bad.’
Alcaraz has since previewed his round two match against Oliver Tarvet, outlining what he noticed after watching footage of the British qualifier.
Carlos Alcaraz started Wimbledon 2024 struggling
It’s worth remembering that, whilst this was far from Alcaraz’s best performance, he did start his 2024 Wimbledon title defence in similar fashion.
He began that campaign with a hard-fought straight-sets win over Mark Lajal, a lesser-known Estonian who took him to 7-6 and 7-5 in the opening two sets.
And again, whilst he may have beaten Aleksandar Vukic in just three sets, he was again taken to a tiebreaker in the first set.
Only once he had come through his first real challenge, a third-round five-set epic over Frances Tiafoe, did he truly start to play close to his potential. Alcaraz went on to win the title at a relative canter after overcoming the American.
This should afford fans of the Spaniard some comfort to know that, historically, he will grow into this event.
