Carlos Alcaraz leaned back, looked up and yelled in celebration. The Spaniard had just secured a spot in the semifinals of the ATP Finals in his tournament debut, setting up a match against top-ranked Novak Djokovic. \u201cVamos, vamos,\u201d Spanish for \u201cCome on, come on,\u201d Alcaraz shouted as he clenched his fists after beating Daniil Medvedev 6-4 6-4 on Friday. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the most difficult challenges that I\u2019m going to face, facing Novak in the ATP Finals, where he has won six times,\u201d Alcaraz said. \u201cNovak is Novak. He is the best player in the world right now. He\u2019s lost just six matches this year, he\u2019s unbelievable.\u201d Alcaraz and Djokovic have played each other four times and won two each. Djokovic won their most recent encounter in the final in Cincinnati in August, while Alcaraz beat the Serb in the Wimbledon final.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to play my best tennis and enjoy it the same way I did the past few matches,\u201d Alcaraz said. \u201cI\u2019m excited to face Novak.\u201d The 20-year-old Alcaraz is the youngest ATP Finals semifinalist since Rafael Nadal in 2006. But Alcaraz, who missed last year\u2019s tournament because of an abdominal injury, got off to a shaky start at the season-ending event for the year\u2019s top eight players. He lost his opening match to two-time champion Alexander Zverev before getting back on track with a straight-set win over Andrey Rublev.<\/p>\n
That left him needing to beat Medvedev, who had already qualified for the semifinals, to advance. The Russian didn\u2019t make it easy. Medvedev had two break points in the fourth game but Alcaraz came out on top of a 33-shot rally and then produced another big serve before going on to hold. In the seventh game, Alcaraz broke Medvedev to love for the lead. He then held three set points but needed only one to take the opener with a powerful, cross-court backhand. After wasting two break points in the third game of the second set, Alcaraz got the decisive break when Medvedev double-faulted to allow the Spaniard to serve for the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis match was really, really tough . but everything I did before this match I did almost perfectly so I\u2019m really happy,\u201d Alcaraz said. With Alcaraz advancing, the top four players in the world have qualified for the semifinals. Medvedev will face Jannik Sinner. \u201cAt this moment he\u2019s in top form. The results prove it. He can do everything,\u201d Medvedev said. \u201cI need to definitely be at my absolute best and better than today.\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t want to lose a match before playing semis. It\u2019s not the best feeling to lose a match. Your body reacts differently. Now I have to kind of regroup myself for tomorrow.\u201d ZERO WINS<\/p>\n
Zverev finished his season by beating Rublev 6-4 6-4 in the late match, with neither player having a chance of advancing. Rublev saved two match points before falling to a third straight loss at the tournament without winning a set. Zverev has had off-court issues recently after a German court issued a penalty order against him over allegations he caused bodily harm to a woman. Zverev has disputed the allegations and is contesting the penalty order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carlos Alcaraz leaned back, looked up and yelled in celebration. The Spaniard had just secured a spot in the semifinals\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":11692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[3408,3190,3407,3193],"class_list":["post-11691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-alexander-zverev","tag-atp","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-novak-djokovic"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}