The joyful climb of Carlos Alcaraz

When Carlos Alcaraz wins a tennis title, a mere lower case mention of his first name doesn’t feel sufficient. Never mind that nobody in Alcaraz’s inner circle calls him by that name—to them, he’s Carlitos, or even Charlie. Carlos? That’s what Alcaraz’s grandpa calls him, a shade too formal and stern.

Alcaraz isn’t formal or stern. Carlos—CARLOS!—is unvarnished joy. On Sunday the Spanish tennis comet won the 2024 French Open for his third major tournament championship, and he did it in his usual rollicking fashion, sometimes playing below his talent, sometimes scintillatingly above, finally settling into himself late and pulling away from Alexander Zverev in five hectic sets, 6-3, 2-6, 5-7, 6-1, 6-2.

He almost coughed the whole thing up. Alcaraz was cruising with a 5-2 lead in the third set when a stubborn Zverev ripped off five straight games to swipe it right out from underneath him. It was a baffling breakdown, the sort of match-turning lapse a loser might regret on his couch 40 years later.

And then it was fine and forgotten. Because CARLOS!

The kid is a merry dervish, unruffled when he’s supposed to be ruffled. He appeared destined to lose the Wimbledon final last year to Novak Djokovic when Djokovic roared back to force a fifth set, and he should have lost in Paris when Zverev excavated his third-set heart. Each time the kid just wiped the board clean and started over, fresh. Youth!

He’s still getting better. He doesn’t look close to where he’ll wind up as a complete player. Alcaraz has wicked groundies and the most outrageous dropper in tennis but he still makes oodles of mistakes, checks out of sets and exits too many tournaments he can easily win. He is 21 years old and sometimes plays like it, overly aggressive or strangely scattered. His serve isn’t fully weaponized. He doesn’t possess the psychological lockjaw of greats like Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer.

He’s on course, though. He’s even pacing ahead of the giants in a few ways—Alcaraz is the youngest men’s player to win a major on all three surfaces, hard court, grass and clay. With Djokovic recovering from a knee injury, defending champ Alcaraz will be the favourite at Wimbledon this July and probably when the tour swings back to the Roland Garros terre battue at the Summer Olympics.

Carlos in brick red and Games gold: Why not?

As the Journal’s Josh Robinson noted, the French was supposed to be the trophy Alcaraz collected first. Like Nadal, he grew up on clay, mastering skid stops and finicky bounces before he got comfortable playing on anything else. He is trained by a dirt dog, former No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero. As soon as Alcaraz turned pro, there was a low hum of expectation that Juan Carlos’s preternatural charge would take the Paris baton from Rafa.

Tennis isn’t neat like that, however. Nadal’s been hurt and gone, wincing toward retirement, returning to this tournament only to get bounced by Zverev the opening round. He’s played Alcaraz for Netflix in Vegas but never at Roland Garros, and though he’s made noise about sticking around, it’s likely we’ll never see it. Tennis is cruel like that, too.

It’s Alcaraz’s time. He’s got the talent and the hustle. He’s skipping over what’s supposed to be the hard part for a young sensation—closing out majors—and racking up the hardware. He’s figuring out his body, too: cramps arrive now and again, including Sunday, but he’s learned to avoid stiffening up like Frankenstein’s monster, like he did not long ago. He played back to back five-setters to close this title out—his semi in Paris was another epic with his true generational rival, Italy’s Jannik Sinner.

Sinner, a first-time major winner in Australia, will be the men’s World No. 1 when the rankings arrive Monday, but that’s only fine print. All of the momentum in men’s tennis again belongs to the happy-faced dynamo from Murcia. Call him whatever you like—Carlitos, Charlie or CARLOS! Just be sure to call him a great champion, because that’s what Carlos Alcaraz is, now once more.

-- The Wall Street Journal