Reigning Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz suffered the most shocking defeat of his grand-slam career as he was bundled out of the US Open by unheralded Dutchman Botic van der Zandschulp.
Alcaraz’s coach Juan Carlos Ferrero looked on with a face like thunder as his charge slipped to a 6-1, 7-5, 6-4 defeat in two hours and 19 minutes.
It was the end of the road for the man who had come in as tournament favourite with the odds-makers, having won both the two most recent majors in Paris and London.
The result will have an interesting knock-on effect for the British contingent in New York. Alcaraz had been expected to face Jack Draper, who beat Facundo Diaz Acosta earlier in the day, in a Saturday showpiece.
But Draper’s third-round opponent will now be van der Zandschulp, the world No74, who hadn’t won back-to-back matches on the tour all season until this match. Indeed, the whole of the draw’s second quarter is now gaping wide open.
Four of the highest-ranked seeds in this section – Alcaraz, Hubert Hurkacz, Sebastian Korda and Karen Khachanov – have all now been eliminated, and although No10 seed Alex de Minaur has reached the third round, he is carrying a lingering hip injury. De Minaur will also face a Briton on Saturday, when he meets the resilient Dan Evans.
To return to Alcaraz, he made a lamentable start, playing with neither intensity nor accuracy and seeing the first set slip away in barely half-an-hour. He must have imagined that he would be able to retrieve the situation. But even when he did begin to improve his level, van der Zandschulp continued to match him in every department.
Even though he had never previously beaten a top-five player at a major, van der Zandschulp remained astonishingly composed as he mixed big serves with athletic defence and even outdid Alcaraz in the way he controlled points from the net.
It was a breathtaking display from a man who had felt so demoralised after his first-round loss to Fabio Fognini at May’s French Open that he considered retiring at the untimely age of 28.
“I am a little bit lost for words,” said van der Zandschulp in his on-court interview with Mary Joe Fernandez. “I got a lot of confidence from the last match [a straight-sets win over former Wimbledon junior champion Denis Shapovalov]. I believed from point one that I could make something in this match.If you want to beat one of these guys you have to be unbelievable calm.”
Alcaraz admitted after the loss that he was still trying to compute what had just happened. He didn’t deny, however, that he was feeling fatigued after a long season that has already brought him those two major victories and the silver medal at the Paris Olympics.
“Tennis calendar is tough,” said Alcaraz. “I took some days off after the Olympics and I thought that would be enough for me. It was not.
“He played really good tennis. I thought he would give me more free points. It was confusing a bit. I didn’t know how to manage or deal with it.”
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