US Open Day 8 - Alcaraz vs. America

Catherine Whitaker (0:10)

Well, hello, and welcome to The Tennis Podcast, coming to you from Tennis Podcast Tours, New York after a cracking day, a fourth round action at Flushing Meadows. If you don't already know, I'm Catherine Whitaker, and alongside me are my comrades, David Law and Matt Roberts, bringing you daily shows throughout this and every Grand Slam of the tennis season. And after one of the most brutal starts to a slam that we can remember in terms of late finishes, here we are recording at 10pm. What are we going to do with the many hours until 4am when our body clocks are expecting us to go to sleep?

Matt Roberts (0:49)

I will be overriding that body clock and going to sleep.

Catherine Whitaker (0:54)

That's the plan. Anyway, folks, we are catching up with normality one day at a time. Let's start with the men's side of things today.

And after a tough scene yesterday with Taylor Fritz bombing out unexpectedly a fantastic set of American results today, three of the four men that have come through this bottom half of the draw and into the quarterfinals today are American, Frances Tiafoe, Alex Michelsen, and Ben Shelton. In theory, a 75% chance of an American man reaching the final from this half of the draw. The problem for them is that the one non-American is Carlos Alcaraz. And he, David, put on the performance of the day, 6'4, 6'3, 6'4, to beat poor old Tommy Paul, the only American man to be unsuccessful today, tell us about this Alcaraz performance.

David Law (1:54)

I don't think it could have got any better other than if he had just taken all of his breakpoint chances. I think he sealed about 4 out of 14 But the fact that he set up 14 breakpoints in three sets tells its own story. I don't even think Tommy Paul played badly in this match. He was disappointed with elements of it in his post-match press conference, but he said even if I'd have got those right, that doesn't mean I was going to win. He started off in incredible fashion. I mean, this is a guy who had beaten Alcaraz in two of their first three matches on hard courts in North America.

They always have good-looking matches. He's one of those players that feels like he can move with Alcaraz to a degree.

He's a shot maker. He likes flair. He likes these rallies, these impossible passing shot rallies.

It's just that Alcaraz does the same thing at about 30% better at least. And if you look at the record, I think it was 11 sets in a row that Alcaraz had won coming into this particular match. So that kind of leveled things out and then some after the early struggles for Alcaraz. But still, Paul came out and he was feeling it out there in front of the New York crowd, which was full.

And he was the one who got the gasps from around the net post forehand down the line on the full run, on the full stretch, hitting it sort of between the umpire's chair and the net post, right into the corner. It was the most incredible shot. And the crowd were going wild for him. And that's when it was on serve in the early three or first four or five games of this match. And you're thinking, OK, well, he's playing and he looks like he's playing as well as he can. Alcaraz is fine at the moment. It feels competitive. And then suddenly Alcaraz put his foot down. And he made Tommy Paul look ordinary. It was astonishing. It didn't look like Tommy Paul's game could trouble Alcaraz in any way. It didn't matter what shot he hit, Alcaraz had an answer to. He was too fast. He was too powerful. His touch was a joke. I mean, he hit several forehand drop shots, moving backwards in the court when he's just sort of shaped up as if he's going to blast a forehand. And you have no clue that the drop shot has come in till the last second. You talked at the start of this tournament, Catherine, and he did in his press comments about his freshness of mind at this stage of the tournament, the stage of the year where everybody's so fried, everybody's hanging on. And he's had five months without playing the sport, and he's loving being back, Alcaraz. And that is coming out in his tennis, I think. Fortunately, there doesn't appear to be any lingering issues with the wrist. So what you're left with is a fresh, best player we've ever seen, or one of them.

And poor old Tommy Paul just had no answers. At the end of it, we've talked before about how does he go away and work even harder in the off season? Because this is a guy who doesn't leave any stones unturned. How can he think, well, if I just do this better or do that, I can catch this guy in the Yannick Center? You can't.