Carlos Alcaraz is playing in Vienna this week. He hadn’t planned to come, he accepted an invitation. He plays Karen Khachanov on Tuesday around 3:30 pm. That part I understood straight away.
What I didn’t understand is the sentence he said in the mixed zone, a few hours before the match: “I’m happy with the way I’m playing and with my current level, but I feel like I’m not quite in the swing of things yet.”
Silly question, but where is the swing of things? First I thought of a tennis swing. A forehand, a backhand, a swing you would be inside of. But you’re not inside a swing, you hit one. So I thought of a room. The swing of things would be a place, and he would be just next to it, in the corridor.
I reread his results in the We Love Tennis article, on the 7:32 train. Quarter-final at the US Open, lost in the fifth-set super tie-break to Ben Shelton, who went on to the final. Title in Tokyo. Third round in Shanghai. If that is being next to the swing of things, I wonder where I am, compared to the swing of things. In another city, I think.
He gave another lead: “I need to come here, train with these guys, play against them to find my rhythm again, or at least find it little by little.” So the swing and the rhythm may be the same thing. And you find them by playing against people. He says he hasn’t played many tournaments this year, and that he is coming off a few weeks without competing.
So in tennis, when you feel a bit lost, you add a tournament. When I feel lost, I go back to my kot, my student room.
The swing of things is when your down-the-line forehand goes in three times in a row. I was there, in March. On a Tuesday evening.
I made a note. According to We Love Tennis, he wants to regain confidence and rhythm before Paris, Turin and the Davis Cup. Anyway, I still have a lot to learn.
It’s true, we checked: We Love Tennis.
