Alcaraz beats Norrie and wins the title in Buenos Aires

The seventh seal of Carlos Alcaraz arrives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in an Atp 250 tournament perhaps without great pretensions, but which was won and brought home without too many worries. Just to make it clear to the rest of the troop, especially to rival for number one Novak Djokovic, that 2022 was not just a coincidence. And in reality nobody thought so, but certainly in the period between the end of the US Open and this beginning of 2023 it hadn’t been exactly the best, for the phenomenon from Murcia, who, let’s remember, isn’t even twenty years old.

a good test

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Alcaraz therefore won the seventh tournament of his career, where he was seeded n.1, beating Cameron Norrie (seeded number two) in the final, in a match that until 5-3 in the second set was going smoothly as the ‘oil, for Spanish. Then a break from Norrie suddenly lengthened the match, but not by much, given that in the end Carlos beat the Briton up 6-5, thus closing 6-3 7-5 in one hour and 33 minutes. Not a bad return, therefore, for the class of 2003, certainly awaited by more demanding challenges and more convincing tests. He’s not yet the Alcaraz we know, much leaner physically and less powerful, but he would already be a very bad customer for anyone. Alcaraz won the seventh of the nine finals played, and it is curious that the only two losses both came with Italian players (Sinner in Umag and Musetti in Hamburg, both last year). In this way, Juan Carlos Ferrero’s pupil keeps alive the possibility of returning to number one as early as next week, albeit on an equal footing with Novak Djokovic: it will be enough for him to win, so to speak, the ATP 500 in Rio de Janeiro, in program this week. In that case he would reach 6,980 points, exactly like the Serbian tennis player.