As eloquent as Roger Federer is, there were some raised eyebrows at Melbourne Park this week when he made a questionable sporting comparison to the task that Carlos Alcaraz faces here in trying to complete the career grand slam.
“It’s like Rory [McIlroy] going for the Masters,” Federer, who is one of eight men to have won all four major tournaments, said. “Those things are tough.”
Federer is right to make clear that completing the set is often the hardest challenge of all. Ivan Lendl got no further than the semi-finals at Wimbledon after he had three of the four majors under his belt, while Jimmy Connors was also undone at the same stage of the French Open on four occasions.
McIlroy’s successful attempt in golf last year was very different, though, to the Melbourne mission that awaits Alcaraz. When the Northern Irishman arrived at Augusta in April he was aged 35 with memories of several painful experiences at one of the world’s great sporting venues, the most harrowing of which was his Amen Corner collapse in 2011.
At the tender age of 22 Alcaraz does not carry this emotional baggage. He has rapidly risen to the summit of the men’s game, quickly ticking off the majors along the way — the US Open was won at 19 years old, Wimbledon at 20 and the French Open at 21. If Alcaraz adds this year’s Australian Open to his CV he will take Don Budge’s record as the youngest man in history to complete the career grand slam.
With that said, there is an early indication that this tournament could potentially become a hoodoo for Alcaraz if another two to three years were to pass by without the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup in his hands. For all that Alcaraz has achieved in the sport, he is curiously yet to go beyond the quarter-finals in four appearances.
It would be unfair to overanalyse this apparent weakness at this stage of his career. Last year, for example, there was no shame in losing to the ten-times Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic, who successfully executed a specific game plan that had been developed by his coach Andy Murray weeks before.
There are, though, a couple of suspected reasons as to why Alcaraz has not yet reached the heights here. He is renowned for not holding back in making changes to his technique during the off-season, which may not have fully bedded in during the first month of the year. The GreenSet hard courts here also have a lower bounce than the US Open’s Laykold surface, which does not quite suit Alcaraz’s preference for a higher point of contact with his groundstrokes.
A four-set defeat to Djokovic put paid to Alcaraz’s Australian Open last year
WILLIAM WEST/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Frankly, it is likely only a matter of time before Alcaraz adjusts to this. Ever since he burst on to the tour in 2021 he has been regarded as a quick learner — his transformation on grass in the summer of 2023 from the start of the Queen’s Club Championships to the end of Wimbledon was astonishing. By all accounts, much of his training at home in Spain last month was geared towards the playing conditions of Melbourne.
“I think this is my main goal for this year,” Alcaraz acknowledged on Friday. “It’s the first tournament and the main goal, so it’s going to be really interesting for me how I prepared. I think I made a really good pre-season, just to be in a good shape.
“I’m hungry for the title and hungry to do a really good result here. I’m just getting ready as much as I can. I’m really excited about the tournament beginning.”
There will be a noticeable absence in Alcaraz’s box over the next two weeks. Last month the tennis world was stunned when Alcaraz suddenly announced that he had split with his long-time coach Juan Carlos Ferrero, the former world No1 who had been by his side since the age of 15.
Considering that Alcaraz’s most important tournament of the season is his first, the timing of Ferrero’s departure was puzzling. It is not as though Alcaraz had been on a downturn in form towards the end of last year, which is often the trigger for the exit of a coach. Reports in Spain suggest that there was tension between Ferrero and Alcaraz’s father, Carlos Sr, over contractual disagreements such as training locations and the total number of weeks on tour.
The split with Ferrero stunned the tennis world but Alcaraz said their chapter together “has to end”
YVES HERMAN/REUTERS
“It is something we just decided,” Alcaraz vaguely said of the reasons. “I think [this] chapter of life is a time that has to end. We decided like this.
“I have got to say that I’m really grateful for the seven years I’ve been with Juan Carlos. I learnt a lot. Probably thanks to him I’m the player that I am right now. But internally we decided like this. We closed this chapter mutually. We are both still friends, with a good relationship.”
Alcaraz has not yet appointed a direct replacement for Ferrero and is continuing to work with his assistant coach, Samuel Lopez. One significant technical change spotted on the practice court is a tweak to his serve, in which the motion looks more simple and fluid.
Strikingly, there is a similarity in the early stage of the motion to Djokovic’s. Alcaraz is also now placing the ball on the tip of his racket and standing more upright before the toss in an attempt to reduce the variables for a more consistent serve. The idea, however, that Alcaraz has intentionally copied the Djokovic stance was vehemently denied.
“No, no, no,” Alcaraz said. “I wasn’t thinking about making the same serve as Djokovic. But in the end I can even see the similarities. I think everyone has to make changes and small details. For me the serve is something that I really want to be better every year, in every tournament. I am just putting constant work on the serve.
Djokovic, left, and Alcaraz, right, now look very similar when they serve
“Now with this movement on the serve, I just feel really, really comfortable, smooth, really calm and a peaceful rhythm, which I think helps me a lot to do a better serve. Let’s see how it’s going to be this year.”
It is testament to Alcaraz’s belief in his ability to adapt that such a change has been made before his bid to make history. Completing the set of four grand slams at such a young age would undoubtedly be one of the greatest achievements in the tennis record books.
“To complete the career grand slam already now would be crazy,” Federer rightly acknowledged. “I hope he does it because for the game that would be an unbelievable, special moment.”