Just four days after winning his first Wimbledon, a freshly shaven Carlos Alcaraz was back on the match court with a new haircut on a new surface, fighting his way to victory in two tight singles matches on red clay at the Hopman Cup mixed team event in Nice, France.
He is just 20 years old, full of energy and ambition, surely quicker to recover than elders like Novak Djokovic, 36, who lost the Wimbledon final to Alcaraz and announced on Sunday that he was skipping next month’s Canadian Open, citing fatigue.
The Grand Slam tournaments are understandably the big priority, maybe even the full focus, for Djokovic now. He has won just about everything there is to win in tennis, although there is still that matter of an Olympic gold medal with one more chance coming in Paris in 2024.
Alcaraz just as understandably is chasing it all: majors, Masters 1000s, team titles, individual titles and the sponsors and rewards (he already has nearly $20 million in career prize money).
At first glance, it seemed unwise to put his body and psyche through competition and a surface change so quickly after such a resounding and draining victory.