{"id":249550,"date":"2026-01-21T07:50:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T07:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/249550\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T07:50:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T07:50:06","slug":"carlos-alcaraz-shakes-off-tense-opening-set-to-secure-third-round-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/249550\/","title":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz shakes off tense opening set to secure third round spot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>\u2019s career tennis<\/a> Grand Slam hopes are alive and well at the 2026 Australian Open<\/a>, after he booked his spot in the next round with a closely contested victory on Wednesday (21 January).<\/p>\n

Taking centre-stage at the Rod Laver Arena, the Spanish superstar fought off competition from Yannick Hanfmann to win in straight sets 7-6(4), 6-3, 6-2.<\/p>\n

Both players had their share of the momentum in the first set, as Hanfmann held, then broke serve to establish an early 3-1 lead.<\/p>\n

Calmness and composure from first seed Alcaraz saw him come from behind a number of times, forcing their epic opener to a tiebreaker. It was the world No. 1 who eventually clinched it, taking one step towards the next round.<\/p>\n

Set two began in a similar fashion, though it was not long until the Spaniard got a foothold on proceedings to take a commanding two-sets-to-love lead in the Melbourne heat.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz began to push ahead with a spot in the third round on the line, putting himself on the brink with a 5-2 lead in the third set.<\/p>\n

Just as the crowd had grown used to across almost three hours on the court, it was a hard-fought final game that saw Hanfmann rescue numerous break points before his opponent eventually held serve to see out the match.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew he was going to play great, I know his level\u2026 to be honest, it was tougher than I thought,\u201d Alcaraz said in his on-court interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really happy that I got through a really difficult first set, then I started to feel a little bit better, tactically I feel I played much better.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery match is different; the style of the players is different.\u00a0Yannick has a style [of play] that I\u2019m not really comfortable with on the court, so it wasn\u2019t easy today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alcaraz will face one of Michael Zheng or Corentin Moutet<\/a> in the third round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz\u2019s career tennis Grand Slam hopes are alive and well at the 2026 Australian Open, after he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-249550","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}