“Sometimes, I practice it. I’m not going to lie,” the No. 2-seeded Alcaraz said about the bit of wizardry he delivered in the first set. “But I mean, I don’t practice it, like, too many times. Just in practice, if the opportunity is there, I will try. In the match, it’s kind of the same. If I have the opportunity, why not?”<\/p>\n
At 22 years and 3 months old, Alcaraz is about 6 months younger than Boris Becker was when he got to major quarterfinal No. 13.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz’s opponent on Tuesday will be No. 20 Jiri Lehecka<\/a>, a 23-year-old from the Czech Republic. Lehecka advanced to his second Slam quarterfinal with a 7-6 (4), 6-4, 2-6, 6-2 win over Adrian Mannarino<\/a>.<\/p>\n Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n 2 Related<\/p>\n Alcaraz and Lehecka have played three times, with Alcaraz holding a 2-1 advantage. They have never met in a major.<\/p>\n “He’s one of the two biggest challenges right now in tennis,” Lehecka said. “He’s moving very well. He can serve big. He knows everything. His game is complete. … So for me I will just try to stick to the weapons that I have, to the weapons which worked for me in these last two matchups.”<\/p>\n Early on against Rinderknech, a Frenchman who played college tennis at Texas A&M, Alcaraz closed a love hold that made the score 2-all in spectacular fashion. Moving to his right at midcourt, Alcaraz found himself in what appeared to be a bad spot when Rinderknech wrong-footed him.<\/p>\n But Alcaraz wrapped his racket around his body and flicked a shot up the line.<\/p>\n Perhaps startled that the point wasn’t over, Rinderknech hit a volley that landed in the net. A big smile crossed Alcaraz’s face as he looked over at his coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero<\/a>, in the stands. Alcaraz then placed his right index finger behind his ear, as if acknowledging the spectators’ cheers.<\/p>\n “The people like it; I like playing tennis like this,” Alcaraz said. “My style of tennis fits pretty well to the energy here.”<\/p>\n Alcaraz wound up taking that set in a tiebreaker. Then, midway through the second, Alcaraz produced another highlight-worthy effort with a no-look passing winner, racing forward to get to a short ball and glancing down the line as though he was going to hit to Rinderknech’s backhand, but instead steering a forehand cross-court.<\/p>\n By the last game, even Rinderknech was smiling at other next-level strokes by Alcaraz, who has won 54 of 55 service games through four matches this year at Flushing Meadows and has yet to drop a set. He claimed the title here in 2022 for the first of his five Grand Slam trophies.<\/p>\n Alcaraz is into his fourth major quarterfinal of 2025, the first time in his career he has gone 4-for-4 in that category in a season. He lost to Novak Djokovic<\/a> at that stage at the Australian Open in January, won the French Open in June and lost to No. 1 Jannik Sinner<\/a> in the final at Wimbledon in July.<\/p>\n Alcaraz has now won 34 of his past 35 tour-level matches, including 10 straight since the loss at Wimbledon. His victory Sunday was his 21st at the US Open, the third most by a man in his first five appearances at the New York major in the Open era. The only ones with more are John McEnroe (28) and Lleyton Hewitt (23).<\/p>\n ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aug 31, 2025, 04:21 PM ET NEW YORK — Carlos Alcaraz hit a behind-the-back shot at the US…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-123733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}“Sometimes, I practice it. I’m not going to lie,” Carlos Alcaraz said of the behind-the-back winner he delivered in the first set Sunday against Arthur Rinderknech.\u00a0Robert Deutsch\/Imagn Images<\/p>\n