A match lost by Carlos Alcaraz in his debut in Cincinnati that saw the Spaniard so nervous that he smashed a racket repeatedly on the ground before capitulating 6-4 in the third set against Gael Monfils. A scene, the one that coincided with the Frenchman’s break at 3-1 in the third set that went viral on social media, like the images of the racket disintegrated by the fury of Alcaraz, who was in his first match on North American hard courts after the defeat in the Olympic final against Djokovic and after having skipped Montreal. With Nole still in Europe and Carlos out in the second round (his first), therefore, for Sinner even if not 100%, it is an opportunity to increase his lead in the rankings again. Thanks to this result, Jannik Sinner is mathematically certain to remain number 1 in the world at least until the end of the US Open.
France’s Monfils is the second oldest to beat a top-three player in the 2000s after Roger Federer, who at 38 defeated No. 2 Novak Djokovic at the 2019 Nitto ATP Finals.
Alcaraz instead risks slipping to number 4 if Alexander Zverev were to win the tournament. The German can in fact reach 7635 points: if he were to succeed he would become number 2 in the world, and therefore would play the US Open as the number 2 seed, with Novak Djokovic number 3.
