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Carlos Alcaraz had to play 4 hours and 34 minutes to get through the second round of Roland Garros.
The Spanish Carlos Alcaraz surpassed with difficulties the second round of Roland Garros against his compatriot Albert Ramos, who had a match point and ended up playing. defeated 6-1, 6-7(7), 5-7, 7-6(2) and 6-4, in 4 hours and 34 minutes.
In a vibrant game, the head of series number 6 was forced to work hard and come back to continue in a tournament where he is one of the main candidates for the final victory.
“Thanks to the public, I felt I feel at home”, he cried. Alcaraz, who was breathing fast like someone who has been saved from a major scare.
Nothing foreshadowed the scenario that occurred when the match began. and in less than half an hour Alcaraz had scored the first set. But surely, when he looks back many years from now to review his career, he will remember this appointment as one of those that forged his character.
Because after that quarter, Alcaraz was bogged down in the trap he set for him. Ramos, who placed in front of a maze.
The number 44 in the ranking, 34 years old, gave a strategic lesson with which he tamed his team. the power of the 6 in the world, 19, who attracts all the media spotlights on his back, to the point of considering him the main rival of the Serbian Novak Djokovic and the Spanish Rafael Nadal, the great dominators of the last years.
The tennis player who has marked the beginning of the season could not find the way out due to his precocity and his power, which have led him to sign up for two Masters 1,000, Miami and Madrid, in addition to the tournaments in Rio de Janeiro and Barcelona.< /p>
Alcaraz, who has shown that he is used to rubbing shoulders with the greats, who has defeated Djokovic and Nadal, got tangled up. against a tennis player who has had his best deeds in the past.
The Murcian was 13 years old when Ramos reached the quarterfinals at Roland Garros, his greatest feat along with the final he played in the final. in Monte Carlo the following year, one of the seven he has played, six of them on clay.
All the experience gained was put at the service of victory on a hostile track, the Simone Mathieu, the third in importance of the complex, which chanted “Carlós, Carlós!” As a sign of respect for his new hero, fresh air on a stagnant circuit.
The experience of Ramos, a tennis player who makes little noise, served to insulate yourself from those setbacks and continue along the marked path, make your rival run, prevent him from loading his gunpowder arm, take him to the limit to push him to failure.
Unforced errors are They accumulated as Alcaraz’s patience seemed to run out. The gifted hidden in a body of 19 years left The teenager appeared and fear loomed. in his look and his gestures of desperation.
so he ran away the second set, a clay tennis work of art by Ramos, and lasted 20 minutes. The lesson was the whole first part of the third, only stopped by punctual blows of genius from Alcaraz, who couldn’t help but let the partial escape.
The duel was equalized. something in the room, when fatigue went out of tune. Ramos’s aim was missed, but the astute Catalan surprised him. in the ninth, he snatched service to his rival and was placed in a position to close the match with his service.
After overcoming a break ball, he had another match, which he did not know how to conclude, leaving an Alcaraz alive who had arrests to force the game tiebreaker in which he was much superior.
The match, which by then was already a coin toss, paralyzed the game. the tournament. Everyone was aware of what was happening on that track where the champion of tomorrow was on the ropes in front of a veteran with little track record.
It was the fourth time that the young man from Murcia had played a five-set match and he had won them all. Last year at Wimbledon he went up. He beat Japan’s Yasutaka Uchiyama in two sets and at the US Open He also had five sets in the third round against the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas and in the round of 16 against the German Peter Gojowczyk, against whom he had also lost the first two.
The fourth did not start. with good omen, 3-0 for Ramos and, again, the young promise against the ropes. But there appeared the best version of him, he remade himself, he disappeared. the fear of the game of him, he stretched & gué; the arm of him and, although Ramos still resisted, finished & oacute; to close the duel.
Alcaraz will face off. for a place in the round of 16, and thus improve His performance last year against the winner of the duel between Frenchman Richard Gasquet and American Sebastian Korda.