The Spanish tennis player Carlos Alcaraz qualified this Tuesday for the second round of the United States Open, fourth and last ‘Grand Slam’ of the season, after the withdrawal of the Argentine Sebastian Saez and when he already dominated two sets to zero.
After having given up the first two sets in a tight way and seeing himself already with a ‘break’ down in the third, the South American, who had requested medical attention after losing the second set, was unable to continue, greatly diminished in his physique and left via free the Murcian, who until then was undergoing a demanding first exam in New York.
Under strong heat and humidity in the Arthur Ashe, when Baez decided to give up, the two players had already been fighting hard for almost two and a half hours, with highly disputed points and, especially in the second set, full High quality on both sides.
Alcaraz, who reappeared in Flushing Meadows where he made the leap last year with his quarterfinals and level victory against the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, needed his best tennis to get rid of the Argentine, who had his best options especially in the second set.
Baez always challenged the third seed with his shots and forced him to give one more in many moments to win the point. That caused many forced errors in the Spaniard (47), who was also not at his best level with the service (6 double faults), but who also calmly handled the most complicated moments.
The clash began very evenly, with the two players imposing their serves and with few options for the rest. The one from El Palmar, however, knew how to play with the pressure in the final moments when he was down 6-5 in his favour, and achieved the key ‘break’ that gave him the first round.
At that moment, it seemed that Alcaraz was going to break up the match. He broke serve again at the beginning of a set that left many points to remember, many of them in the long third game in which the South American tennis player recovered the disadvantage and balanced things again.
The Murcian failed to find his best rhythm again and was surprised by his rival, ‘grown’ in his confidence and who broke him for the second time to go 4-3 up, an advantage he was unable to take advantage of because Juan Carlos’s pupil Ferrero knew how to recover quickly to avoid a scare. His final acceleration allowed him to also take the second set with a final ‘break’ (7-5) and Baez could not hold out much longer on the court.
Source: Europa Press
