Carlos Alcaraz
Carlos Alcaraz’s fumbling reply to a question about women’s tennis has resulted in speculation that he is dating someone on the WTA Tour.
Following his win over Miomir Kecmanovic in the fourth round of the Australian Open, Alcaraz was asked about the players he likes to watch on tour during his spare time.
“Men’s, women’s, wheelchair tennis, it doesn’t matter, who are your favourite players to watch when you have spare time?” tennis great Jim Courier asked during the post-match on-court interview.
The world No 2 replied: “I like to watch every match if I can. But I love watching play Daniil Medvedev, Novak [Djokovic], [Jannik] Sinner as well.
“Those guys, I like to watch, because every time they step on the court, they put their best level and, as a huge fan of tennis, I like to watch a pretty good, high level so those are the best players in the world I like to watch.”
After he failed to mention any women’s players, Courier followed it up with another question.
“I’m going to put you on the spot, what about WTA?” the tennis great fired away.
The crowd started laughing and Alcaraz got a little twitchy and also laughed nervously before replying: “Well, I watch WTA as well. No, I mean, when I can obviously. When I turn the TV on, if it is WTA, ATP, whatever, I like to watch it obviously.”
There was initially some criticism of Alcaraz for failing to name a single WTA player, but tennis commentator Mark Petchey explained there was a reason why he didn’t give any names.
“One of the reasons I will be deleting this app the moment i am no longer wanted for commentary (am sure that day can’t come soon enough for some) is that there is zero critical thinking on here or nuance,” he wrote.
“It was so blindingly obvious why @carlosalcaraz didn’t want to put a name to who he watched on the WTA tour. I even said it after he had finished. You want to know why players become robots in interviews, it’s precisely to stop those type of situations occurring.
“Nothing will overshadow how fun that performance was to watch though.”
Many believed the “blindingly obvious” reason was the fact that naming a player would result in speculation that they were dating.
And former world No 7 Mardy Fish has gone down that road by saying the 20-year-old is probably dating a WTA player.
