Alcaraz is the Big 3's parting gift

Tennis' new Boy King is the logical extension of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.

At the end of 2002, Roger Federer had edged his way to No. 6 in the ATP men’s singles rankings. The next year he won his first Grand Slam championship, at Wimbledon. The year after that, Federer became the No. 1 player in the world, and either he, Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic would hold that spot until 2021, when Daniil Medvedev won the U.S. Open.

In May of 2003, squarely in the middle of all that, Carlos Alcaraz was born in La Palmar, Spain, a village on the Andulasian coast and a prime surfing spot.

Alcaraz literally grew up watching the Holy Trinity of tennis. Its members won major titles on all surfaces. They resisted categorization. They were superior in every phase. They had no weaknesses. They conducted themselves as adults. And they were fierce until the final point.

Alcaraz caught on very quickly. At 19, he won the U.S. Open Sunday over Caspar Ruud of Norway, and took over the No. 1 position.

In doing so, his absolutely unfettered play and his naked emotion put New York in his back pocket. He was by far the crowd favorite over Ruud and had a sizeable chunk of support in his five-set semifinal win over Frances Tiafoe, who was trying to become the first American to win a Slam since Andy Roddick won the 2003 Open.

Remember the way tennis used to be, when they had this thing called “winners”? If you crushed a forehand into the opposite corner, or if you lasered a backhand that grazed the line, that was a winner. It would not be returned.

With Alcaraz and with those in his wake, those are merely good shots. They most likely will be knocked back, with some authority, and will have to be followed by an equally sensational shot to win something. Alcaraz spent two weeks, much of it past midnight in a city that refused to sleep if he was still playing, running down those dreams, chasing drop shots and lobs and overheads throughout the borough of Queens and normally doing something astonishing with them. The crowds were all too eager to anoint the Boy King.

And they might be right. On the other hand, Djokovic could still be the best player in the world. He won Wimbledon and could have won here, if he wasn’t convinced that Bill Gates wouldn’t use the Covid-19 vaccine to plant a homunculus, or something, in his heart.

Nadal won the Australian and the French and hadn’t actually lost a Slam match this year until Tiafoe stopped him in the round of 16. Federer is 41 and has had three recent knee surgeries, but is scheduled to play in the Laver Cup later this month.

The Trinity won 20 of 22 Slams at one point, but its legacy will speak louder than its numbers.

It isn’t just Alcaraz. Nick Kyrgios is the most talented player of the lot but is held back by an unquiet mind. He lost in the quarterfinals and went on a racket-busting tantrum. Yet he also was a gallant runnerup at Wimbledon. If he can arrange to be at his best whenever he plays Alcaraz, drop whatever you’re doing.

Jannik Sinner of Italy beat Alcaraz at Wimbledon and had a break point against him in the quarters, before he lost what became the longest U.S. Open match in 30 years (five hours, 15 minutes).

Medvedev, who was run off the court by Kyrgios in the quarters, was the No. 1 seed in New York. Ruud reached the finals of the French. So Alcaraz will have many pursuers. The hope is they all push each other as the Trinity has.

Alcaraz won a Masters 1000 series event in March, over Ruud in the finals, but he really announced himself at the Madrid Open, another1000 Series event, this one played on clay in a pulsating venue called the Magic Box.

In back to back matches, Alcaraz beat Nadal and Djokovic. He cranked 51 winners against Djokovic, then won the tournament over Alex Zverev in straight sets. Afterward, Zverev told him, “You are the No. 1 player in the world. Even though you are five years old, you are beating us all.”

Now we get to the place where all tennis stories go to die. We ask the eternal question, “What about us? Why can’t we have a 19-year-old like Alcaraz, before recreation departments convert every court to Pickleball?”

You may find it hard to believe that there are 12 Americans in the world’s top 100 and five in the top 42. Taylor Fritz (No. 12) won a Masters 100 title at Indian Wells last fall, knocking off Nadal in the finals. Tiafoe, who won every tiebreaker he played at the Open and took Alcaraz through four minutes and 18 seconds, is ranked 18th. Just last month, Tommy Paul beat Alcaraz in Montreal.

Maybe that’s the most we can expect. Maybe the days of Sampras, Courier, Agassi and Chang were just a glorious harmonic convergence that we shouldn’t have taken for granted.

But the other truths are that tennis is a very tough dollar with limited on-ramps for a young player, it’s still prohibitively expensive for most of those who could make a difference, and there aren’t enough college scholarships to let a player refine himself — and many of those go to foreign players anyway.

Tennis is a hellhole. It’s one on one. There is no clock. When the wheels come off, they often stay off. It is littered with injuries because of an inhuman schedule that Alcaraz, hopefully, can get around. It is lonely and psycholoigcally dangerous. When you lose it happens in the most humiliating way possible, because somebody has just hit a tennis ball past you. You can’t shoot a 64 and lose, as in golf, and you can’t blame it on a flat tire or a blown engine.

Because of that, a great tennis tournament is the most exhausting form of sports drama, and the U.S. Open delivers, year after year. The roof keeps the play going and spares us a rain-postponed, anticlimactic Monday final. The electronic line-calling takes the outrage out of the game. And this Open gave off the best vibes possible, the joy of discovery, a feeling that the Trinity was ready to release its stranglehold, but not without paying it forward. It was noted that Ruud is a longtime visitor to Nadal’s tennis academy. So was the Open’s boys and girls singles winners, Martin Landaluce of Spain and Alexandra Eala of the Phillippines.

Carlos Alcaraz leaves New York as the most exciting young athlete in the world. If he were the Next One, that would be fine. The fact that he’s one of the Next Three or Four is finer.