Carlos Alcaraz has plenty of positives to build on since returning to the Tour, but admits he still has work to do to reach his desired level.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The seven-time Grand Slam champion missed almost five months of the Tour earlier this season due to a right wrist injury. He started his comeback with a run to the quarter-finals of the US Open, where he was beaten in a five-set thriller by Ben Shelton. Alcaraz went on to win the Japan Open by dropping two sets in five matches played. However, he then suffered a shock third round loss at the Shanghai Masters to Zizou Bergs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alcaraz\u2019s attention now switches to this week\u2019s Vienna Open, which he has entered via a wild card. He was originally due to play in Saudi Arabia\u2019s Six Kings Slam before the event was postponed to December because of security concerns in the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m practising well and I\u2019m feeling really well. Obviously the consistency of playing such great tennis, doing week after week or doing the whole, is a goal for me right now,\u201d\u00a0Alcaraz told Tennis TV.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say my level is good. It is a good level, but not my best, and not the way I want to be. So \u00a0I\u2019m working on it. I\u2019m working hard in every practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a long process, step by step, but I think I\u2019m doing the right steps.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alcaraz is playing in Vienna for only the second time in his career. In 2021, at 18, he reached the semi-finals, becoming the third-youngest player to reach that stage of the tournament. Only Stefan Edberg and Roger Federer have managed to do so at a younger age than him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Spaniard has won 26 of his 27 ATP titles since last playing in Vienna and has held the No.1 ranking for 66 weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFive years, it\u2019s been a really long journey for me, doing great things on and off the court,\u201d\u00a0he reflected.<\/p>\n
\u201d I\u2019m just happy and proud about everything I\u2019ve done during these five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, from now to the next five years, I\u2019m going to be another player and hopefully be better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless of how well he finishes the season, Alcaraz will not be able to deny Alexander Zverev the year-end No.1 ranking for the first time. He has won four of his last five meetings against the German, including their clash in this year\u2019s Australian Open.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking about Zverev during his pre-tournament press conference on Monday, Alcaraz has nothing but praise for him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn tennis, it\u2019s not just about stepping onto the court and playing your best tennis on one particular day,\u201d he commented.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also about the consistency you show throughout the entire year. He has won two Grand Slam titles this year. I\u2019m happy for him because I know how hard he has worked and how long he has been pursuing this goal. He absolutely deserves it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alcaraz is currently 33-5 this season and is yet to lose a match at an ATP 500 event (11-0). In Vienna, he has a tricky opening match against Karen Khachanov. The Russian was a semi-finalist at the US Open and has reached the quarter-finals in two out of three tournaments played since then.<\/p>\n
The match is set for Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz has plenty of positives to build on since returning to the Tour, but admits he still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":947199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-947198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/947199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}