exit to Ben Shelton at the US Open.<\/a><\/p>\n“The drop shot is part of my game,” Alcaraz said after sealing victory with a trademark touch.<\/p>\n
“In those really close and important moments, I tried to use it because it was a really good weapon for me in this match.”<\/p>\n
American Fritz, whose only previous victory against the Spaniard came during Team World’s triumph in last year’s competition, kept errors to a minimum.<\/p>\n
However, Alcaraz struck 42 winners to Fritz’s 20, bringing an audience that included Roger Federer and Andy Murray to their feet.<\/p>\n
Facing match point at 8-9 down in the tie break, Alcaraz fired an ace before leaning on a drop shot to stave off a second. He converted his third match point when Fritz failed to retrieve another delicate drop shot over the net.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Saturday, Andre Agassi’s Team World had threatened to run away with things.<\/p>\n
Alex de Minaur fought back from a set down to shock Alexander Zverev 2-6 7-6 (7-5) 11-9, while American debutant Learner Tien edged Italy’s Flavio Cobolli 6-3 2-6 10-7.<\/p>\n
Following Alcaraz’s singles heroics, Zverev returned to the court alongside Casper Ruud to secure an important 6-4 7-6 (9-7) doubles victory over Alexander Bublik and Brandon Nakashima, keeping Europe ahead going into the final day.<\/p>\n
Match wins are worth three points on Sunday, with the first team to reach 13 points lifting the trophy.<\/p>\n
Europe are chasing their sixth Laver Cup title, while holders Team World are aiming for their third.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two-time Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz narrowly avoided back-to-back singles defeats for the first time in 18 months as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-784064","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\/784064","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=784064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}