It will be back-to-back finals in Spain for Carlos Alcaraz after he managed to come back from a set down against Novak Djokovic in the 2022 Madrid Open semifinals.
After winning the coin toss, Carlos Alcaraz has decided to let his opponent serve first, and it was a good decision by the Spaniard as he took Novak Djokovic's very first service game in the first 2022 Madrid Open semifinal.
Alcaraz was already 3-1 and 4-2 up in the set, but it looked like Djokovic was a slightly better player all the time as he got the break back and even had a setpoint in the tenth game. After he failed to convert it, set reached the tie-break, where despite the Spaniard's best efforts to come back from 6-2 down, Djokovic prevailed 7-5 in the tie-break to take the opening set.
In the second set, the 2022 Barcelona Open champion continued to struggle with unforced errors. After missing out on breaking Djokovic in the sixth game, Alcaraz himself faced two breakpoints in the ninth and one in the eleventh game of the second set. However, he went on to win 7 out of the last 8 points in the set to level the score of the match.
At the start of the third set, Alcaraz looked much more comfortable and also appeared to be more confident on his serve. Moreover, he was very dangerous on his return when he had 5 breakpoints in the first six games of the set. But he didn't manage to convert any of those and the score was levelled at 3-3 in the final set.
After missing out on so many breakpoints, the Spaniard also faced a breakpoint in the seventh game, but also managed to dodge it do gain an important 4-3 lead in the decider. He already led 30-0 on Djokovic's serve, before the world number 1 won 6 points in a row to level the score of the set once again and gain 30-0 lead on the Spaniard's serve this time.
Yet the tables turned once again as Alcaraz won 4 points in a row to make another step closer to winning the match as he led already 5-4. In the 10th game, Alcaraz already had a matchpoint, but the Serbian hit an ace and eventually won the game.
The final set reach the tie-break and in the end, the young Spaniard handled his nerves better to win the match 6-7(5), 7-5, 7-6(5) after 3 hours and 37 minutes. In the final of the 2022 Madrid Open, he will be facing the winner of the second semifinal between Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alexander Zverev.
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