“Carlos Alcaraz Decides on a Brief Tennis Hiatus After Disappointing Asian Swing Loss, and Potential Adjustments to Season’s Closing Weeks Schedule Loom”
Two-time Grand Slam winner Alcaraz’s first trip to China didn’t exactly pan out the way he had hoped as his intention was to move ahead of Novak Djokovic in the year-end No 1 rankings race with title runs at the China Open and Shanghai Masters.
However, he was beaten by Jannik Sinner in the semi-final in Beijing before Grigor Dimitrov stunned him in the round of 16 at the ATP Masters 1000 event in Shanghai.
Alcaraz and his team returned to Murcia immediately after Wednesday’s defeat to Dimitrov and the 20-year-old has opted to take a breather from training ahead of his next assignment.
Spanish publication Marca reports that he will only return to practice on Thursday and the plan remains to play at next week’s Swiss Indoors in Basel, before finishing the season with the Paris Masters and ATP Finals in Turin.
However, Alcaraz could still make changes to his schedule as “it remains to be seen if the initial plans are fulfilled or if there is any variation in the coming days”.
The Spaniard has already been advised not to overdo it terms of tournaments as he has struggled with injuries since his emergence last year, missing the 2022 ATP Finals and this year’s Australian Open.
If there is a “variation” to the plan then it will most likely affect Basel with the ATP 500 tournament running October 23-29.
Alcaraz admitted after his Shanghai defeat that he has to up his game.
“I always say that you can improve more from the defeats than the wins. After this trip, I took a lot of lessons to improve, to be better,” he said. “As I said in Beijing, I have to work on a few things to beat the best guys and after this loss, it [happened] not too much time ago, so I have to think about it. But I will take a lot of lessons to improve in practice before the tournaments that I have ahead.
“I think I’m playing great tennis. Even if I didn’t make the quarter-finals [in Shanghai] or lost in the semi-finals [in Beijing], I think I’m playing great tennis. So I have to practise at my 100 per cent in the weeks before Basel. That is the next tournament for me, so I’ll try to make my best in that tournament.”
He has 180 points to defend in Basel as he beaten in the semi-final by Felix Auger-Aliassime last year while he lost in the quarter-final of the Paris Masters in 2022.
