Carlos Alcaraz further diminished any worry of an injury by outplaying Jan Lennard Struff in the fourth round of the 2024 Madrid Open.
This is a matchup we saw at last year's Madrid Open, and it was a pretty interesting three-set match that the Spaniard won. Struff played much better last year than this year, but even this level from Struff was good enough to make some people wonder whether the 20-year-old might encounter some troubles.
We know that he's been dosing himself, especially on the forehead, but when he ripped one past Struff in the fourth game of this match, it was obvious that things were going well.
He went on to outplay Struff in the next few games to win that opening set 6-3. The arm injury was an open question for most of this ATP Masters 1000 event, especially with how Alcaraz approached it.
He spoke about it carefully, which was unlike him, and he certainly looked timid at times, but this one was a good match. It wasn't perfect because the German certainly had chances, but he didn't convert them in the first set.
At the start of the second set, Struff lost his serve but then actually converted a break point to make it 2-2. After that, we mostly saw both players holding their serve without any issues.
The set ended up in a tie-break, which was qute interesting. Alcaraz was the first to strike in the tie-break and took an early 3-1 lead. After that, Struff came back with two points of his own to make it 3-3, and actually outplayed Alcaraz to win it 7-5.
The final set was another rollercoaster. Alcaraz got an early break, and despite seemingly sailing the ship into port, he lost the one-break advantage when serving for the set, wasting four match points, and even facing a break point at 5-5.
However, he was able to take the deciding set into the tie-break and win the match, he could have won already in the second set, almost 90 minutes prior to the match's real finish.
Still, he was able to control the tie-break from start to finish, getting two mini-breaks and leading early 3-0. The final score was 6-3, 6-7(5), 7-6(4), as Alcaraz moved into the quarter-finals, where he will face Andrey Rublev.
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