Carlos Alcaraz is a sensational tennis player, but even he can improve and do some things differently to be even more efficient.
The 20-year-old has been one of the greatest performs at a young age that the sport has ever seen. Alcaraz already has two majors to his name, he reached he world no. 1 rank, and collected many trophies, including ATP Masters 1000.
Often, Alcaraz is compared to the Big Three, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, and Roger Federer with many saying he's a mix of all three of them. Former world no. 1, Andy Roddick, agrees with this, as he described the qualities of the three legends in the recent episode of his "Served with Roddick" podcast.
"I think in our generation it was like the players wanted to watch Roger because he could do things racquet skill-wise. And Rafa was like this blunt force trauma of physicality and spin."
"And Novak is like a wrestler who gets you into holds that you can’t get out of. Whereas, Roger kind of had this grace and he would come out with shots that looked like he was playing video games."
According to the former American player, Alcaraz is a combination of the three, but he also has an advice for him. To succeed even more and be more efficient when it matters, the Spanish player shouldn't attempt to hit spectacular shots every time, but rather become more boring, according to Roddick.
"And now Alcaraz is almost like a combination of all three. He’s still finding his way. I think the best version of himself will be when he gets a little more Novak into his game, where he makes things a little more boring and isn’t spectacular all the time."
He recalled when he watched Alcaraz beat Nadal at the Netflix Slam, having an experience of watching the young prodigy from up close.
"When I was with Andre Agassi in Vegas, that’s kind of what he was saying is that he is so spectacular that the next point of success is becoming maybe a little bit more boring on court and kind of getting people and locking them down and not throwing as many uppercuts."