Carlos Alcaraz's tennis brilliance on grass and at Wimbledon, explained by two seconds

New York Times

21 hours ago

Carlos Alcaraz is a walking tennis highlight reel, but the two seconds that best explain his brilliance on grass don't involve him hitting the ball at all.
A few times each match, Alcaraz will end up on defense in his backhand corner. His opponent will hit an approach shot and then go on the attack, transitioning from the back of the court to the front. Alcaraz will turn his shoulders to his left, extend his right arm and curve his racket down and around the outside of the ball, slicing it back.
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As soon as he makes contact, the stopwatch starts.
The ball will arc from his opponent's right to their left, cutting through the air and getting lower and lower. As it floats, Alcaraz moves. The opponent might not realize it yet, but the point is flipping. The balance of power shifts, as the ball crosses the net and Alcaraz follows it forward.
Sometimes it will bounce, sometimes it won't. In either case, the opponent has gone from a position of power to a position of weakness, even with Alcaraz out of position. Against most players, nothing more than an average volley or pick-up would win the point. Against the two-time Wimbledon champion, only a brilliant, perhaps absurd shot will keep them in it.
Those two seconds explain why the other 127 players in the Wimbledon men's singles draw have one big problem: Alcaraz on grass. On Saturday he said that he thinks grass produces the loveliest tennis in the world.
'The style that the people bring to the court when they play on grass, I think is so beautiful,' he said.
'The sound of the ball. The movement is really tough, but when you get it, it's kind of you're flying.'
He would say that, about just about any surface. He has already won five Grand Slam titles at 22. Two on grass, two on clay, and one on hard courts. He would probably win a Grand Slam played on the moon.
Still, the two-time defending Wimbledon champion did something especially absurd the past couple weeks. He won the French Open on the clay of Roland Garros in Paris, took a few days to relax in Ibiza, Spain, and then went to Queen's Club in London to play a grass tune-up, where he waltzed to the title on the strength of the weakest part of his tennis: his serve.
It has long been the missing link in his game, but of late he has joked about wanting to be a serve bot, after changing his motion and learning to be more accurate, more often. If he serves like he did at Queen's, then the All England Club might save some time by handing him the trophy this week, instead of going through the formality of 127 matches. He averaged 12 aces per match and half of his first serves went unreturned. Across the past 52 weeks of tennis, Alcaraz has received no reply to 33 percent of his first serves.
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That is a big jump, but the scariest thing about this is that Alcaraz hasn't won 27 of his 30 career matches on grass by being a serve bot. Last year's Wimbledon final apart, he's won most of them by not relying on it at all. He's even won some of them in spite of it. It's not even about the power of his groundstrokes, which are as much of an audio experience as they are a visual one.
That's because the Alcaraz of grass, or 'grasscaraz' as he would have it, is a different experience to the Alcaraz of acrylic and clay — especially clay, on which he is also the best male player in the world. On grass, it's his footwork, his speed and his touch that propel him to victory. He does his most devastating work in the negative space: when the ball is floating over the net and when his opponent has it on their racket.
Tommy Paul, the No. 13 seed at Wimbledon, may be more qualified to talk about this than anyone. Last summer, Paul made the quarterfinals at Wimbledon and at the Paris Olympics, where the tennis was played at Roland Garros. He faced Alcaraz in both matches, 22 days apart.
Paul described the two experiences as he chomped on a sandwich in the mixed zone at Roland Garros, before heading back onto the court for a doubles match with Taylor Fritz. He won a set on the grass, and lost in straight sets on the clay, but that was best of three.
'On the clay, you can kind of escape some points,' he said.
'You can go from defense to neutral a little easier. On the grass, once you're on defense with him, it's pretty difficult to get out of that defensive position. He's so aggressive and closes the net so well.'
Players talk about feeling smothered when they play Alcaraz, of feeling like no matter what they do, he can get on top of them out of nowhere. Once he's in command of a point on grass, it's basically impossible to wrestle control back. At Queen's, he won 76 percent of the points in which he got into an attacking position.
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But like those two seconds in which it looks like nothing is happening when everything is happening, Alcaraz's superpower emerges when he is behind, not ahead.
He is ridiculously fast. He's especially adept at taking those small steps that allow players to maintain their balance at high speed on the grass, stopping and pivoting out of tight spaces. That helps, but he also has the skill that makes the greatest player faster than everyone else: anticipation. The ability to see where the ball is going before it's actually going there.
'Not waiting to notice it when it comes over the net, but waiting for it when it comes off your opponent's racquet,' three-time Wimbledon champion Chris Evert said during a video call earlier this month.
This is why Alcaraz has a win rate on the grass that matches Rafael Nadal's on clay, albeit over a small sample size. It doesn't come from the kind of grass-court tennis that grows out of a dominating serve, the creed of seven-time champion Pete Sampras. It's closer to that of eight-time champion Roger Federer — but Alcaraz is getting closer to possessing the serve accuracy that made Federer's life even easier. If he unites those two poles, watch out.
Paul Annacone coached both those players.
'The best person on grass right now is Alcaraz, because he is this combination of Roger and Andre [Agassi],' Annacone said during a recent interview. 'He can take it early and be on top of the net before you blink.'
It's what he does in that two-second window of genius. Alcaraz will sprint to catch up with a backhand and knife a short slice that passes just inches above the net. The opponent will chase in after it and have to hit the ball up, and Alcaraz, more often than not, is right there to intercept it and put it away. That's anticipation, but it's also the skill of that curving, arcing slice, and the seconds it buys him to turn a regulation volley for his opponent into a pressure shot that needs to be perfect to win the point.
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He wins when he is in attack, and he steals the point when he is in defense. That's essentially unbeatable, especially if his serve is firing like it did at Queen's.
Alcaraz, who first played on grass in 2019 as junior at a tournament in Roehampton and then at Wimbledon, uses this two-shot combination on every court. But it's on grass, where the movement delta between him and everybody else not named Novak Djokovic is widest — and where time is more precious than any other surface — that it is most effective.
During his title run at Queen's, Alcaraz won 37 percent of points when his opponent was on the attack. The average for the rest of the draw was 27 percent.
At Wimbledon, Alcaraz stole 36 percent of those points in 2024 and 37 percent in 2023. In 2022, when he was still finding his way, his steal score was just 30 percent.
In last year's final against Novak Djokovic, he stole 39 percent of points, luring errors from Djokovic's racket on the volley. In his quarterfinal against Paul, he stole 45 percent.
'He can explode, stop and start before most people can think,' Annacone said.
Alcaraz said Saturday there is a fit between how he likes to play and the kind of tennis that excels on grass.
'I really want to hit slices, dropshots, going to the net all the time, playing aggressively,' he said. 'It's the style that you have to play.'
The funny thing about Alcaraz is he's often not great about talking about what makes him great. He's such an instinctive player that he often surprises himself with how good he is. After he won at Queens, he explained how low his expectations were about making the transition from clay to grass. He had just two days of practice on it before the tournament.
'It's really complicated,' he said of the switch. 'I just came here with a goal to play two, three matches, to try to feel great on the grass and to give myself the feedback of what I have to improve, what I have to do better. But, you know, I just got used to the grass really quick.'
Indeed, he did, especially considering that it's not even his favorite surface. Clay is his favorite, he said. That figures, given he's the two-time defending French Open champion, too.
Men who play professional tennis really do have a big problem.