If a player hits a running trick shot to save a break point, but later gets broken off three unforced errors and a double fault, is it good tennis? For Carlos Alcaraz, definitely.
He delivered a signal example of the tension running through his documentary series, ‘My Way,’ just as Netflix released its trailer. While Alcaraz was oscillating between the sublime and the absurd on court against Daniel Altmaier at the Monte Carlo Masters in Monaco, the streaming company put out a snapshot of the series on YouTube.
It asks some fundamental questions of tennis: how much should it require of its stars? How much sacrifice should greatness take? And is there a route to greatness that does not demand everything of the player who seeks it?
Against Altmaier, Alcaraz found himself down 30-40 in his first service game of their match. The German feathered a drop shot just over the net, dragging Alcaraz forward…
He responded with a sharp, cross-court angle…
… but Altmaier read the shot and moved across the court, to send the ball deep down the line on the other side.
Alcaraz, running diagonally to his left, would have to hit a shot through his legs. The easier option was to send the ball back cross-court. Altmaier duly moved to cover that shot; Alcaraz, perhaps obviously, did not hit it.
Instead, he levered the ball down the line, sending Altmaier scrambling to his backhand corner. The German managed to hook the ball back into play, but Alcaraz was waiting to crush a backhand flat into the same corner, which Altmaier could only send into the net.
It was an example of the divine inspiration and at times otherworldly skill — and joy — that Alcaraz brings to the court, and which has carried him to the upper echelons of tennis.
“It’s beautiful to play points like that,” Alcaraz said later, watching the shot back. “I’m trying to put on a show, trying to entertain the people. A point like that… Just to reflect, how my matches are going to be.”
The rest of the match was not so much like that.
Having saved that break point, Alcaraz missed a routine first groundstroke behind his serve. He saved four more break points in the game and held his serve for 1-1. He then broke Altmaier to lead 3-2, before hitting three unforced errors and a double fault to get broken straight back in the next game.
That was the pattern of the first set, oscillating between brilliant points and routine mistakes, before Alcaraz broke again at 5-3 to take it, 6-3.
The second set was more routine, with the Spaniard ultimately triumphing 6-3, 6-1 to set up a quarterfinal against No. 12 seed Arthur Fils.
“I want to do it my way,” Alcaraz says, in the series trailer, of his goal to be the best player in the world. That ambition is intercut with opinions from Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, who both did it their way.
“To accomplish what Novak (Djokovic), Roger or myself have done,” Nadal says, “you need to feel that the sacrifices are worth it and that they pay off.”
With 66 Grand Slam titles between the three greatest men’s players of all time, there is little argument that they paid off in achievement. What Alcaraz appears to ask is whether or not they pay off in other ways.
Alcaraz, 21, already has four Grand Slam titles. He is the youngest man to win a major on all three surfaces, and still has two more opportunities — at the 2026 and 2027 Australian Opens — to become the youngest man to win all four majors.
If he wins the title in Monaco, he will reassume the No. 2 spot in the men’s rankings, behind only his closest rival and the player with whom he shares the mantle of the best in the world: Jannik Sinner.
His style of play is so singular that both his wins and his losses can appear as if from another world.
When he loses, whether a set or a whole match, he tends to lose badly. The creativity looks like naivety and the shotmaking looks like waste — and it tends to happen against lesser-ranked players. He has 16 defeats and one retirement due to injury since the start of 2024, but only six of those defeats came against top-10 players. Two of those six came in one tournament, the 2024 ATP Tour Finals, during which he was struggling with illness. The average ranking of his opponents in the other 10 losses is 32.
He is making adjustments, mentally and technically, most notably to his serve and his backhand. He has changed the motion on the former and the racket take-back on the latter, which means mistakes sometimes flow like water but also reveals a dedication to on-the-fly improvement, one of the hardest things to do given tennis’ demanding schedule.
Alcaraz describes the challenges of that schedule in the trailer, emphasizing that he wants to be able to spend time at home, to see his family. If he also wants to dominate the sport as Djokovic, Nadal and Federer did, that time will be limited.
As the retired Nadal and Federer hint at in their roles as Netflix talking heads, it’s only possible to find out if all that was worth it in the end.
On the way, there will be tweeners.
There will be errors too.
(Top photo: Valery Hache / AFP via Getty Images)
