Photo credit: Matteo Villalba/Getty
Absence makes the heart grow fonder—and intensifies Carlos Alcaraz’s hunger.
World No. 3 Alcaraz arrived in Monte-Carlo confiding “I miss clay.”
Today, Alcaraz embraced dirt with a dynamic finish.
Alcaraz surged through seven straight games defeating Francisco Cerundolo 3-6, 6-0, 6-1 to score his first career win at the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters.
"I didn’t start well. I made a lot of mistakes and I let him play inside the court, dominating the points," said Alcaraz, after improving to 16-4 on the season. “I just knew that I had to do something else, play more aggressively, and play my own tennis—drop shots, going to the net and more aggression.
“The most important change was the return, I tried to return closer to the line and push him.”
The 21-year-old Spaniard has now won 13 of his last 14 clay-court matches with his lone loss in that span coming against Grand Slam king Novak Djokovic in the Paris Olympic gold-medal match played at Roland Garros last summer.
Playing for his first title since Rotterdam in February, Alcaraz will face Daniel Altmaier for a quarterfinal spot. The German qualifier Altmaier backed up his upset of Felix Auger-Aliassime in round one by beating 38-year-old Richard Gasquet 7-5, 5-7, 6-2 in the French shotmaker’s final Monte-Carlo match. Gasquet announced he will retire after playing one final Roland Garros.
"Well, he's playing great. I think he have won two important matches and really good matches," Alcaraz said of Altmaier. "I mean, he has a lot of confidence right now. He's a really tough clay player, so his tennis, his style, suits pretty well to clay.
"So it's going to be a really tough match. I have to be focused on every point and on every shot. I will try to learn from this match just to make the right things and to be better, you know, on the things that I didn't play well today.
"So I decided just to keep going, to play another match here in Monte-Carlo, that I haven't played too much in a row here. So it's going to be a great day, and let's see."
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In his first match since his shocking Miami Open opening-round loss to No. 55 David Goffin, Alcaraz started off slowly.
Playing for his 10th clay-court win of the season, Cerundolo broke twice in succession to go up 4-2. Cerundolo served out the first set at love.
Reigning Roland Garros champion Alcaraz was just getting warmed up.
On a breezy, chilly day, Alcaraz showed resilience saving a pair of break points in his first two service games of the second set. Moving the ball corner to corner, Alcaraz broke at love for a 4-0 second-set lead then broke again at 15 to snatch the second set and force a decider.
How damaging was the Alcaraz return game?
In the second set, Alcaraz won an astonishing 12 of 14 points played on the Argentinean’s serve.
Though Cerundolo held to snap his seven game slide and level the decider at 1-all, Alcaraz rampaged through five games in a row closing in 98 minutes.