![\"Alcaraz](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/skysports-carlos-alcaraz-tennis_7031259.jpg\")
<\/p>\nCarlos Alcaraz overcame a serious-looking ankle injury to progress to the second round of the Japan Open on Thursday, beating Sebastian Baez after appearing to disagree with his own coaching box.<\/p>\n
With the first set poised at 2-2, the top seed twisted his ankle on the hard court in Tokyo. Having received treatment and heavy strapping, Alcaraz played on before claiming a break to move 5-4 ahead.<\/p>\n
At that point, the Spaniard’s box seemed to encourage him to stop. However, play was then suspended for rain causing another delay and when the players re-emerged under the roof, Alcaraz took the rest of the contest by storm.<\/p>\n
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\n Alcaraz underwent heavy strapping to his left ankle early in the first set, but did come back out and went on to win<\/p>\n
The Spaniard maintained his sole break to see out the opening set 6-4, before dominating the second set 6-2 to secure victory.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz, who will now likely undergo a scan on his injured left ankle, is scheduled to face Chile’s Alejandro Tabilo or Belgium’s Zizou Bergs in the second round.<\/p>\n
“I was scared too, I’m not going to lie,” Alcaraz said after. “When I landed on the ankle, I was worried to be honest because it didn’t feel good at the beginning.<\/p>\n
“I’m just happy that I was able to play after that and play such good tennis. Let’s see. I think it’s not going to be easy the next day and a half for me. I will try to recover, to do whatever it takes to be ready for the next round.<\/p>\n
“It was unlucky. I would have felt a little bit guilty if I couldn’t continue and play some tennis for the fans so I just tried to have a good mindset and give everything that I have.”<\/p>\n
Britain’s Kartal through to China Open second round<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Britain’s Sonay Kartal booked her place in the China Open second round on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Twitter<\/p>\n
This content is provided by Twitter, which may be using cookies and other technologies. Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Twitter cookies. Enable Cookies<\/a> The 23-year-old defeated American Alycia Parks in straight sets 6-3 6-2 in Beijing and will next face Australian Daria Kasatkina for a place in the third round.<\/p>\n Watch the ATP and WTA Tour, live on Sky Sports or stream with NOW<\/a> and the Sky Sports app<\/a>, giving Sky Sports customers access to over 50 per cent more live sport this year at no extra cost. Find out more here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz overcame a serious-looking ankle injury to progress to the second round of the Japan Open on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-168103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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