TENNIS
Alcaraz questioned for focusing on fitness too much over tennis
Former tennis player Nikolay Davydenko has made some controversial comments about Carlos Alcaraz’s preparations ahead of the new season.
Carlos Alcaraz is undoubtedly one of the best tennis players in the world. And certainly one of the most charismatic ones. He has proven to be one of the most talented youngsters of his generation thanks to his impressive skills but his only weakness has probably been his form in the last months of the season, right after the US Open.
Alcaraz’s results after the fourth Grand Slam tournament of the season haven’t been as good as expected for the last two campaigns, and some saw in his preparation quite a few things to be improved.
One of them is former tennis player Nikolay Davydenko, who has stated that the Spaniard has been focusing more on his “supernatural physical tennis” than in tennis.
After lifting his first Wimbledon title in July, the Murcia native didn’t win any other title and Davydenko believes that his preparation plan has something to do with it.
Davydenko: “Alcaraz is very strange”
The former world No. 3 believes that Alcaraz shouldn’t be having physical issues at the age of 20 and that probably there’s something to fix in his training methods.
“For me, Alcaraz is very strange. Why is this happening? Because in the Spanish school of tennis, there is very serious physical activity”, he said.
“They swing unrealistically, they have supernatural physical fitness. They focus on this more than on tennis. For them, tennis is in the background. They say that first of all, you need to run and not get tired, and then play on the other side of the court”.
“The body cannot withstand these overloads. Of course, at 20 years old it is too early to get your first injuries. Then others will appear – it goes in a chain. Therefore, he will shoot somewhere, but somewhere he may withdraw from the tournament because something happened”, the 42-year-old added.
In recent weeks, Alcaraz’s coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, said that the tennis season starts in January and finishes in November, referring to the fact that his pupil needed to show the same level of intensity throughout the year and not only until the end of the US Open.