Frustrated Carlos Alcaraz calls Cincinnati Open loss to Gaël Monfils "worst match I ever played"

August 16, 2024: Will it forever be remembered, in tennis circles, as the day Carlos Alcaraz destroyed his racquet?

The Spaniard has spent the last four years charming us with his ever-present smile. Few, if any, champions have taken defeat so well, or showed less anger on court. As we found out at the Cincinnati Open on Friday, though, frustration can boil up in any of us, including Carlitos.

The moment of annihilation came when Alcaraz’s opponent, Gael Monfils, held serve to go up 3-1 in the third set with a high volley winner. As the ball bounced for a second time a few feet in front of him, Alcaraz took a hop, crouched down, and drove his racquet into the court, with maximum force, four times, leaving the frame mangled like a sculpture you might see in an avant-garde art gallery. Roger Federer fans may have been reminded of the way the normally mild-mannered Maestro suddenly decimated his Wilson stick—with a single smash—in a loss to Novak Djokovic in Miami in 2009.

“It never happened before, because I could control myself in those situations,” Alcaraz said. “Today, I couldn’t control myself, because I was feeling like I was not playing any kind of tennis.”

In this case, it was hard to blame him.

Alcaraz’s reaction took the crowd and the world by surprise, but it came at a fitting moment in the match. For most of the first two sets, he was clearly superior to Monfils. The play was patchy on both sides, and there were precious few of the entertaining rallies most of us expected from these two. But Alcaraz broke Monfils early and held out the first set without facing a break point; two of his service games were love holds. The rallies were short, and Monfils was barely holding on in them; only his serve was making any impression. When Monfils’ coach, Mikael Tillstrom, said, “Try to stay with him as much as possible,” both men smiled. Easier said than done.

I felt like it was the worst match that I ever played on my career. Carlos Alcaraz

It only seemed a matter of time—or one big shot—before Alcaraz rolled through the second set as well, especially after he saved four break points at 2-3. But Monfils discovered a tactical combination that kept him afloat. He hammered down unreturnable serves—he had 15 aces for the match—and then mixed paces and swings with his ground strokes. A high, deep topspin ball down the middle would be followed by a forehand slice, which would be followed by a rocket forehand at a very different speed. It was just enough to keep Alcaraz off-balance and making errors until rain postponed play on Thursday night, and just enough to get Monfils through the second-set tiebreaker today.

All of which left Alcaraz rightfully fuming. For the first hour, this match between a 21-year-old and a 37-year-old hardly seemed to be a contest. Now he was in a third set against an opponent who had gone from looking over the hill, to looking like a wily veteran, in the span of a few games.

Alcaraz’s anger was stoked further at the start of the the third when he squandered two break points at 1-0; was broken at 1-1 on a routine backhand error; and failed again to break at 1-2 after committing another routine backhand error. When Monfils held with that high volley, Alcaraz’s racquet was doomed.

Violent outbursts often lead to a clearer head and better play, but not for Carlitos today. Two games later, he made yet another inexplicable mistake on a break point, and never challenged Monfils’ serve again.

Afterward, Alcaraz was didn’t hold back on himself.

“I felt like it was the worst match that I ever played on my career,” he said. “Couldn’t, couldn’t play.”

He said he had been practicing well in Cincy on other courts, but the surface and the balls in center court felt much faster, and that he had a “totally different feeling” there.

“I stepped on the court and I warm up, you know, the five minutes warming up, and we couldn’t, we couldn’t put two balls in,” he said. “It was incredible, incredibly deeply different. It was insane.”

This was billed as a battle of showmen, but few thought the older, less-successful of these two uber-athletes would give the younger, higher-ranked one a lesson in patience and tactics. Monfils showed that he can still serve big enough, and move just well enough, to stay with the younger set.

What did Alcaraz show? Not much, in his mind. He said he’s going to try to forget this match ever happened, move on to New York, and make sure he’s ready for different conditions on different courts.

Still, he was calmer and more polite about it than he had been as he was terminating his racquet earlier.

“I think it was impossible to find good stuff about this match,” he said to end his press conference. “Thank you.”