The scene comes down to three things: four and a half hours on court, a fifth-set tie-break lost 10-7, a smile on the way to the locker room. Mouratoglou, who coaches Stefanos Tsitsipas, laid out his position in public. “Champions hate losing. That is precisely why they are champions,” he said, before citing ten years of work with Serena Williams and the example of Pete Sampras.
He adds that if Alcaraz really meant what he said, then he came to New York without believing he could win the tournament, and he points to the nine games lost in a row against Ben Shelton.
The boy played four and a half hours, he lost, he smiled on the way in. I’m not criticising. I’m comparing. In Couvin, when someone came home beaten, we told him it was all right, we left him the last slice of tart and we talked about the weather. Nobody wondered whether he meant it. Here they counted the games, the hours, and now they are reading the smile again. At home we checked the tart, not the smile.
The rest of the newsroom followed the affair with all the seriousness it deserves. Céline mostly notes the extra hour and a half on her own longest match, “and it was bucketing down that day”.
Carlos Alcaraz has seven Grand Slam titles. Mouratoglou had already said the Spaniard should keep playing, while Alcaraz wants to give himself more breaks in future to look after himself.
It’s true, we checked: We Love Tennis.
