Hit-and-miss Alcaraz wins battle of beauty and the beast

Telegraph

2 days ago

Carlos Alcaraz started this match with a double fault. At which point, by an unfortunate piece of timing, a champagne cork popped high up in the Centre Court stands. As an omen it was prescient. He may have had the better of Jan-Lennard Struff, the veteran German number three. But the trouble is, for periods of this encounter, he failed to have the better of himself.
'It was stressful,' he said after his victory. 'It was hard.'
This was as extreme a collision of styles as you can get at Wimbledon. Struff was all howitzer serve, pinged down from his 6ft 4in frame at upwards of 140mph. Beyond that sizeable weapon, though, his game is almost entirely one-dimensional. Alcaraz, on the other hand, sees the court in 3D, his sense of space and timing allowing him to deliver shots that bring any crowd to its feet.
It should, then, have been straightforward: beauty against the beast of a serve. And so it began.
Struff's best hope seemed to lie in blitzing his opponent with an ace. Because once a rally got going, once Alcaraz could find the spaces beyond the reach even of Struff's elongated wingspan, there appeared to be only one winner. And the Spaniard had the first set won within half an hour.
The crowd loved everything he did, exuding delight when he caught a wayward return by Struff on his racket head and deftly flicked it on to the ball boy. And they went into whoops of delight when he produced a diving winner to conclude the set.
Poor Struff, whose game has long been based on hammer and thwack, appeared to have no counter to a player who refused to be intimidated by serves rearing up at his chin with the speed of a Mercedes hurtling down the autobahn.
When Alcaraz broke the German in the third game of the second set, everything seemed to be going swimmingly for those on Centre Court hoping to watch Emma Raducanu in daylight. Then Struff did something wholly unexpected: he broke Alcaraz's serve. Those who thought it an aberration, that Alcaraz would quickly restore his lead, were disabused by Struff breaking him again to go 5-3 up. And he duly took the second set when Alcaraz twice smacked his ferocious forehand returns into the net. This was suddenly the Spaniard's issue: he kept tripping himself up.
'I knew it was going to be difficult. His game suits the grass, big serve,' said Alcaraz afterwards. 'To be honest, I was suffering in every one of my serve games too, break points down. Every time he try to push me. And he did it. I was just trying to survive I guess.'
The champion appeared to have a word with himself in the break between sets, warning against the self-inflicted pain of unforced errors. He began to ease away, taking the third set with some delicious finishes that had the crowd in delight. Though for all the cooing at his brilliance, nobody enjoyed his superb winners more than the man himself, pumping his fist at his bench when an audacious lob landed just in.
For Struff, this represented perhaps a last chance to reach Wimbledon's fourth round for the first time. He may have been ranked 125, just the 123 places below his opponent, but he was not going to go without a struggle. And some rocket-fuelled serves. Not to forget some classy shots too: a volleyed winner in the fourth set was exquisite.
But ultimately Alcaraz was fortunate that for every mistake he made, Struff matched him. Not least when, in the fourth set, with a chance to break serve with a simple volley, he plopped his shot into the net. It was a significant miss, one whose meaning appeared to be etched across the face of the towering German.
'I still don't know how he missed that volley,' said Alcaraz. 'I still can't believe I am here [as the winner]. I try to fight every ball, try to see if he was going to miss. I was lucky in that. I made the most of it. In the end I got the break and it was done. I'm just proud to get the win in four sets.'
It was a victory that extended his winning streak this year to 21 matches. This is not a man who is keen on being beaten. From here on, however, he knows full well that if he is to extend that run, if he is to defend his title, he will be increasingly less able to rely on his opponent making more mistakes than him.