If a player hits a trick shot to save a breaking point, but later three casual mistakes and a double error are broken down, is it good tennis? For Carlos Alcaraz, sure.
He gave a signal example of the tension that ran through his documentary series ‘My Way’, just when Netflix released his trailer. While Alcaraz Oscilled between the sublime and the absurd on the field against Daniel Altmaier at the Monte Carlo Masters in Monaco, the streaming company brought a snapshot of the series on YouTube.
It asks some fundamental questions about tennis: how much should it require from its stars? How much sacrifice should greatness take? And is there a route to greatness that does not demand everything from the player looking for it?
Altmaier was 30-40 against Altmaier in his first service game of their match. The German fought a drop -shot just over the net and dragged Alcaraz forward …
He responded with a sharp, cross-Court Hoek …
… but Altmaier read the shot and moved over the field, to steer the ball deep in the line on the other side.
Alcaraz, diagonally to the left, should hit a shot through his legs. The easier option was to return the ball. Altmaier moved properly to cover that shot; Alcaraz may have clearly not touched it.
Instead, he delivered the ball along the line and sent Altmaier to his backhand corner. The German succeeded in hooking the ball back into the game, but Alcaraz waited to crush a backhand flat in the same corner, which Altmaier could only send in the net.
It was an example of the divine inspiration and sometimes extraterrestrial skills – and joy – that brings Alcaraz to court and who brought him to the upper echelons of tennis.
“It is wonderful to play points like this,” Alcaraz said later and looked back at the shot. “I try to set up a show, try to entertain the people. A point like that … Just to think about what my competitions will be like.”
The rest of the game didn’t seem that much.
After saving that breaking point, Alcaraz missed a routine first basis behind his serve. He saved four breakpoints in the game and kept his serve for 1-1. He then broke Altmaier to lead 3-2 before he made three casual mistakes and a double mistake to be broken back immediately in the next game.
That was the pattern of the first set, oscillating between brilliant points and routine errors, before Alcaraz broke again at 5-3 to take it, 6-3.
The second set was more routine, in which the Spaniard eventually 6-3, 6-1 trium pinks to set up a quarterfinals against no. 12 Seed Arthur Fils.
“I want to do it my way,” says Alcaraz, in the series trailer, of his goal of being the best player in the world. That ambition becomes Intercut with opinions of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, who both did it in their own way.
“To achieve what Novak (Djokovic), Roger or I have done,” says Nadal, “you have to feel that the sacrifices are worth it and that they are fruit.”
With 66 Grand Slam titles between the three largest men’s players of all time, there is little argument that they have paid off in performance. What Alcaraz seems to ask is whether they are bearing fruit in other ways.
Alcaraz, 21, already has four Grand Slam titles. He is the youngest man who wins a major on all three surfaces, and still has two chances – on the Australian Opening of 2026 and 2027 – to become the youngest man who all wins four Majors.
If he wins the title in Monaco, he will display the number 2 spot in the rankings of the men, behind only his closest rival and the player with whom he shares the mantle of the best in the world: Jannik Sinner.
His playing style is so unique that both his victories and his losses can look like they are of another world.
When he loses, whether he is a set or an entire game, he tends to lose bad. The creativity looks like naivety and shotmen looks like waste and it often occurs against less ranked players. He has 16 defeats and one pension due to an injury since the beginning 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, in which he struggled with illness. The average ranking of his opponents in the other 10 losses is 32.
He makes adjustments, mentally and technically, especially to his serve and his backhand. He has changed the movement on the first and the racket backlog on the latter, which means that errors sometimes flow like water, but also reveals a dedication to on-the-fly improvement, one of the most difficult things to do with the demandable scheme of tennis.
Alcaraz describes the challenges of that schedule in the trailer and emphasizes 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.
While the retired Nadal and Federer point out their role as Netflix Talking Heads, it is only possible to find out if everything was worth it in the end.
Along the way there will be Tweeners.
There will also be mistakes.
(Top photo: Valery Hache / AFP via Getty images)