Whew! Carlos Alcaraz survives first round scare, dominates second and third set at Indian Wells
Don’t test Carlos Alcaraz.
That appeared to be the message the Spanish tennis star wanted to send to all challengers Friday evening in coming from down a set to beat Matteo Arnaldi of Italy in his first match this year at the BNP Paribas Open.
The 6-7(5), 6-0, 6-1 win felt like two completely different matches. In the first set, Arnaldi matched Alcaraz point for point, game for game. Arnaldi went down a break, then evened the set to force the tiebreak, where he was the aggressor, putting Alacraz back on his heels and into a corner.
But it was as if Alcaraz, the defending champion here at Indian Wells, was energized by the first set loss. From there, he dominated, winning 12 of the next 13 games to finish the match, routinely shaking his first in celebration with a poised, snarled look on his face in front of a near capacity crowd inside the 16,100-seat Stadium 1.
In the third set, Alcaraz jumped out to a 3-0 lead before Arnaldi won a game. Alcaraz then won the following three games in dramatic fashion, chasing the ball all over the court, with the crowd reacting to every point.
"I was surprised a little bit with the conditions," Alcaraz said. "It's totally different playing during the day than the night session. I was practicing every day, you know, during the day. So with the sun out and the heat, totally different bounces, the ball goes different, and it cost me the entire first set.
"I had to change up my game."
Alcaraz said after the match that the ankle injury that forced him to withdraw from last month's Rio Open surprisingly did not bother him at all during the match.
But Alcaraz added that the uncertainty of how his ankle would hold up added to his jangled nerves, which came in part as a result of it being his first match since winning the title here last year.
"Obviously, this is a really special tournament for me. I want to do well," Alcaraz said. "This is the first match playing high intensity, and I didn't know how it's gonna respond, the ankle. It was a lot of things coming to my mind. I couldn't be focused 100% in the match, and, yeah, it made me getting a little bit nervous.
"I didn't deal with the nerves very well in the first set. When you get nervous, you don't think about it. You don't hit the ball as good as you want. You don't move as good as you want. I think that's the big difference."
For the match, he won 37 of 43 first serve points and faced just four break points, saving three of them.
Alcaraz, who did not lose a single set at this event last year, said earlier this week that he came to Indian Wells to defend his title, and that his aim was nothing less. The 20-year-old is seeking to become the first man to win back-to-back Indian Wells titles since Novak Djokovic won his third consecutive title here in 2017.
An Alcaraz loss would have surely benefitted Djokovic, the top seed here, who is playing at Indian Wells for the first time since 2019. It would have also been a benefit to third-seeded Jannik Sinner, the 2024 Australian Open champion who is a perfect 13-0 this season, among others.
But Alcaraz instead will enter the second round looking as poised and motivated as he was here last year. He'll face Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime on Sunday.
Andrew John covers the BNP Paribas Open for The Desert Sun and the USA TODAY Network. Email him at andrew.john@desersun.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Carlos Alcaraz survives first round scare to dominate at Indian Wells
