Carlos Alcaraz defeats Casper Ruud to win the US Open final
Carlos Alcaraz defeats Casper Ruud to win the US Open final
It’s a moment to live in, and now it’s a moment to forever remember.
Carlos Alcaraz is now the seventh player to win two major championships in the same calendar year, and the first since Bill Tilden in 1911, and it would be a fitting way for us to close his US Open week with this week’s column.
First, though, a quick mention of the match that preceded this final. In the morning’s final, a third-seed Rafael Nadal was stopped by a second-seeded Julien Benneteau to give Alcaraz a commanding edge over his main rival, Roger Federer.
And while it was Alcaraz’s victory over Federer — the final of the Rogers Cup — we took this moment to point to the larger story of the week, the story of Federer’s epic fall from grace as the world’s greatest player. And how it came to this — and the fact that he’s now a major-championship loser. It’s a story that he’s been telling for a while, but it’s only now coming together.
In this week’s column we’ll begin where his story starts — with when he began it, with his own personal journey from high school to major-tournament glory. We’ll trace it back to his childhood, his father and the beginning of his adult life. We’ll examine how and why his rise to the top of the game came to an end without a championship, and how he reacted to the fall from grace.
There’s no denying that he was a player in full flight. While he was yet to win a major, he stood at number three in the world (behind Nadal and Federer) when he played his first tournament at age 17, the 2014 US Open, and he was playing on the main circuit.
But while he was winning the US Open tournament he was also becoming a major-tournament loser, losing in the first round in 2011, the first year that he was eligible
