{"id":402679,"date":"2026-02-01T18:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T18:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/402679\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T18:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T18:24:07","slug":"carlos-alcaraz-how-australian-open-champion-made-history-as-youngest-to-win-career-grand-slam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/402679\/","title":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz: How Australian Open champion made history as youngest to win career Grand Slam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching Alcaraz is, for the most part, like watching sunshine personified. <\/p>\n

There is a carefree joy in his shot-making; the huge forehand that goes blasting through every surface, the drop shots and volleys that few would dare try.<\/p>\n

Then there is Alcaraz himself. He runs around the court with a puppyish enthusiasm, a huge smile never far from his face. The sleeveless shirts, the cries of ‘vamos!’, the ill-advised buzzcut in New York all add to the theatre.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz plays by the motto passed down to him by his grandfather – cabeza, corazon, cojones. Head, heart, balls. A reminder to be brave in the big moments, to truly go for what you want. It has served him well throughout his career.<\/p>\n

Tennis, Alcaraz told Vogue, external<\/a> in 2023, is in his blood. His great-uncle built the club in Murcia where generations of the family would play. His father, who played until he could no longer afford to, was a director there. Alcaraz’s siblings all play tennis, with eldest brother Alvaro acting as hitting partner and unofficial barber.<\/p>\n

Given his first racquet aged four, Alcaraz spent much of his time there. His first coach, Kiko Navarro, told BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller that the young Alcaraz got angry a lot.<\/p>\n

“When he was a child he broke a lot of racquets and I had to take him crying to the hotel or home,” he said in 2024, while Alcaraz described himself as “a bad loser”.<\/p>\n

IMG agent Albert Molina watched an 11-year-old Alcaraz play a Futures tournament in Murcia. “You could already see his winning character, bravery and daring,” he told the ATP Tour website in 2021., external<\/a><\/p>\n

“He had such a variety that he would often get it wrong. In one point he would approach the net, open up angles, play a slice, a lob…”<\/p>\n

Sound familiar?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Watching Alcaraz is, for the most part, like watching sunshine personified. There is a carefree joy in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-402679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402679","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=402679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}