Google News ATP Madrid: Carlos Alcaraz again champion, the Highlights
by LORENZO CIOTTI
Carlos Alcaraz was able to defend the title at the Mutua Madrid Open. The Spanish tennis player suffers, but wins against the lucky loser turned finalist Jan-Lennard Struff: victory with the result of 6-4, 3-6, 6-3. The world number two conquers the fourth ATP Masters 1000 title of his career, after Madrid, Miami and Indian Wells, playing in his fourth final.
The data is clear: the finals of the Masters 1000 Alcaraz are never wrong. Struff's tactic is clear: on the first, but also on the second if he allows it, it's an opportunity to go on the serve and volley. That's what you see in the first game, but the tactical choice isn't rewarded for a first game that doesn't enter and Alcaraz's answers that don't allow him to play as the German would like.
So we start with the break in favor of Alcaraz. Maintaining the advantage for the world number two was not easy: more than eight minutes of the game, with Struff who wanted to repudiate the long rally, accelerating a lot and risking a lot.
In fact, the counter break arrives in the fourth game, with the aggravating circumstance for Alcaraz which was a turn of service lost to zero. The world number two and title holder manages to break serve again in the seventh game, not without difficulty.
And again not without effort, with the German always taking risks, he goes to serve for the set: here he makes no mistake, going to close by not losing points on the fundamental service shift. Struff, however, does not want to say enough to the match and at the first useful opportunity in the second set he is not wrong: Alcaraz scores only one point on his first round of service, but gives in to the strength and accelerations of Struff, who wins the break.
An advantage that once again Alcaraz wants to snatch from him, that the German wants to keep at all costs, but that final half-volley that gives Struff the set is a pearl of a great partial played by the one who started as a lucky loser in this scoreboard.
In the third set, the music changes, with the German no longer able to push as before. Or rather, he pushes but now the risks become mistakes. So in the fourth game comes Alcaraz's break, which instead rises to the next level: the drop shots played at the right time, the balls spinning at very high speed.
That advantage, that break, which gives him the decisive set and the match.