2023-09-02 22:05:01
A set was dropped for the first time in the tournament, yes, but what a match Carlos Alcaraz played against Dan Evans. Against a very uncomfortable tennis player, due to his serve and volley game and his variation with the effects, thanks to the cut backhand shot, Alcaraz uncovered his best version to beat the British (6-2, 6-3, 4-6 and 6-3) and get into the round of 16 of the US Open.
Evans this Saturday was the biggest obstacle the Spaniard has had so far in the tournament. The recent champion in Washington, the best title of his career, savored his success in Canada and Cincinnati, where he practically rested, but recovered his best tennis to put an Alcaraz in real trouble, who needed more than three hours to appease the almost extinct English tennis.
And despite the harshness of the clash, Alcaraz spent much of it smiling and enjoying himself, because he knew that the level of tennis at Arthur Ashe was delighting the public. He had no problem laughing at some great blow from the British or congratulating him when he deserved it, just as he had no problem getting angry when things weren’t going well.
Despite winning the first two sets with relative comfort, since in the first he had to save three break points and in the second it was with a break behind, Evans got him into trouble by breaking him in the seventh game of the third set, when everything seemed like it would end more or less soon.
The man from Murcia had two balls to recover the inconvenience, but it was Evans, at the fifth opportunity to close the set and in an electric game, who took the fall. That’s where Alcaraz paid for his frustration with his racket, fed up with the fact that a match that he should have solved a while ago was getting complicated at a worse level than Lloyd Harris’ in the previous round. The South African was not able to force a fourth set, the British was.
And there Evans did not shrink. With his stylish game, with a backhand that cuts him off in 90% of the shots and with more than 60 hits to the net, he put tennis at the level of being one of the best matches of the tournament so far. Perhaps he was not overly excited, because the feeling is that Alcaraz would close it sooner or later and that the Briton did not have the strength to lift two sets, but at least it was the first time all year that the Spaniard, after winning the first two sets, lost the third.
It was a signal for Evans, who was trying to shorten the points and put as much pressure as possible on the Spaniard’s second serves, to believe that it was possible to kill the first seed in the tournament.
Until Alcaraz, in the sixth game of the fourth set, took advantage of the only ‘break’ opportunity of the entire set and got an advantage that he no longer wasted.
With the clock above three hours and with the public satisfied by the effort of the two tennis players, Alcaraz, who left several of the best points of the tournament along the way, bent Evans and advanced to the round of 16.
There a surprise awaits him, a guest that no one predicted, Matteo Arnaldi, number 61 in the world and who crushed Cameron Norrie 6-3, 6-4 and 6-3 in less than two hours. Despite being practically from the same generation, Alcaraz and Arnaldi have never crossed paths on the circuit until this US Open.
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