Poor schedule management..

Alcaraz is playing a bit too much in a row and is starting to feel pain in his wrist, a choice has to be made

A bit of a scare for Alcaraz in his match against Virtanen, MTO for his wrist and he wasn’t all that reassuring in the short term in his post-match interview. A pain that’s surely due to the sequence of matches, not something very serious, but if he keeps playing on it, it’ll need to be monitored. He’s surely committed to playing this tournament + the fact that it’s in Barcelona is obviously a factor, but he doesn’t really have much leeway afterwards: with Rome and Madrid, which are both 1000s, he’s going to have to make a decision. Either he knows his wrist will hold up, or he has doubts and he’d need to pull out tomorrow against his will. Beyond the injury issue, we can also talk about his level, which is pretty disappointing at the start of this clay season. He’ll ramp up, but Elie thinks there’s a deeper problem and I agree, he’s more tense than usual and you can feel that something’s off. In other words, even without the injury, I think Carlito is beatable right now.

Beatable, but not by just anyone either. Machac can fit into that category, the Czech’s top level is insanely high and he took a set off Sinner last week, for example. For his first round in Barcelona he gave us his special: horrible first set where you almost question his motivation, then a 4 and 1 win while cruising. His last two matches have been magical, he’s playing with incredible looseness and firing winner after winner. Sure, the opposition will be on a completely different level tomorrow, but once again this is not the best version of Alcaraz, and with this little doubt about his wrist, maybe we should give it a try.