He continued: “I just tried to start awake. Starting at 11:30 is something I’m not used to, so my first goal was to start well, focused, with energy and a good rhythm. <\/p>\n
“I started pretty well, pushing him to the limit and trying to play long rallies. I played great tennis and I’m really proud about it.”<\/p>\n
Alcaraz received treatment to his right knee and quadricep muscle while leading 5-4 in the second set, but he said afterwards that the discomfort soon disappeared and he was “not worried about it”.<\/p>\n
He said: “I’m feeling good. I asked for the physio because when he broke my serve, on the last point I just felt something that was not working good in the knee.<\/p>\n
“After five or six points, it was gone.”<\/p>\n
After the medical time-out, Alcaraz broke serve in the very next game to move two sets up, before rattling quickly through the third set to complete victory.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz won his first Grand Slam title at the US Open as a teenager in 2022 and is aiming to win his second major of the year after retaining his French Open crown in June.<\/p>\n
He will return to the top of the world rankings if he matches or betters Jannik Sinner’s performance in New York.<\/p>\n
His fourth-round opponent will be the unseeded Arthur Rinderknech, who is into the last 16 of a Grand Slam for the first time in his career.<\/p>\n
The world number 82 recovered from losing the first set to beat fellow Frenchman Benjamin Bonzi 4-6 6-3 6-3 6-2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He continued: “I just tried to start awake. Starting at 11:30 is something I’m not used to, so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-101812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}