Carlos Alcaraz revealed that he had survived a “difficult month” before lifting his 18th career title at the Monte-Carlo Masters. The Spaniard came to Monaco having never won a match at the tournament, as he lost during his only previous appearance in 2022.
But he went five in a row at the Country Club this week, ending the event as the newly-crowned champion. Afterwards, Alcaraz said he didn’t want to open up on his tough few weeks, and he sent a heartfelt message to his team for sticking with him.
The second seed came from a set down to beat Lorenzo Musetti in Sunday’s championship match, which was moved earlier by three hours to avoid a rain delay.
Musetti – who came from a set down to win four of his five matches en route to the final this week – was clearly physically struggling after a quick turnaround from Saturday evening’s semi-final.
He struggled to win a game after taking the first set, and Alcaraz completed a 3-6 6-1 6-0 comeback to lift his sixth Masters 1000 trophy. After the match, the Spaniard sent his well-wishes to Musetti before touching on his own difficult path to the title.
“This is not the way that I would want to win a match. Thinking about Lorenzo, he’s been through a really tough week, really long and intense matches so I feel pretty sorry for him to end one of the best results he has done so far, it ended up like this. It’s not easy,” he said.
“So I just want to say, hopefully it’s nothing serious and hopefully he is gonna be 100 per cent really soon.
“Talking about myself, I’m just really happy to win Monte Carlo for the first time. I think it has been a really difficult week with a lot of difficult situations that I am really proud of myself how I dealt with everything.
“It has been a really difficult month for me outside, on the court, so coming here and seeing like the hard work paid off, I’m just really, really happy.”
Asked why things had been tricky over the last month, Alcaraz refused to go into detail. He added: “I don’t want to say in public but all I can say is just I was struggling stepping on the court and finding in a good way playing the matches and playing tennis.
“It has been really difficult to find the way to not think about about everything, just focus on important things, to just try to follow the good path again.”
The world No. 3 doubled down on his comments during his victory speech as he shared his appreciation for his team and family.
“I have no words to say how grateful I am for the great work, for everything, to be my team in the professional part, to be my family, because I feel like we are like a family,” he told them.
“We’ve been through a difficult moment the last month let’s say, and I think we’ve been always really strong together, following the right path, doing great things, to come here to Monte-Carlo just to play good tennis
“I just want to say thank you for everything. You made me stay here today, win this tournament. I just want to say thank you and I love the people who are standing here and I love the people who are supporting at home as well.”
Ahead of the tournament, Alcaraz had admitted that the pressure placed on him during Jannik Sinner’s ban had “killed [him] in some way”.
The Spaniard had a chance to close the rankings gap with the world No. 1 during his three-month suspension. But he suffered disappointing losses from leading positions in Doha and Indian Wells before losing his opening match in Miami.
On Saturday, after reaching the final, Alcaraz explained: “Probably in a certain way I was thinking so much about it instead of playing my good tennis and enjoy the time that I stepping on the court and playing matches.”
Content Source: www.express.co.uk