Juan Carlos Ferrero won his only grand slam trophy at Roland Garros in Paris 20 years ago and he had a press conference to mark it however the dominant topic quickly became Carlos Alcaraz.
Juan Carlos Ferrero was a very good tennis player, one that reached number one in the rankings lifting one grand slam trophy as well. That trophy was a Roland Garros one as he triumphed in the City of Lights in 2003.
His press conference about that however quickly switched topics to Carlos Alcaraz and the ultimate professional Ferrero obliged. He first talked about Alcaraz and the difference between this year's version of him and last year's.
As a person, I would say he's more mature. As a player, I think he grows up like super fast on the court. He can let's say, read the matches a little bit better. Even before the match, like talking about the match, you can see that he's more mature on all kind of areas on the court. So, yeah, I would say he's better than last year. I think he has more experience.
That bodes well for the Spaniard because one thing that Novak Djokovic has on the rest of the field is that experience and maturity. Being able to calm himself down when things are not going well and reset in time to mount a comeback.
It's one of the reasons why Alcaraz is generally put up there with Novak when the talk shifts to players who could realistically win the event. Even so, Ferrero wisely played down the expectations explaining that he's still a very young player who is learning on the fly.
Of course, everybody can lose in the first round, you don't have a clue. But I think we play a very good clay season at the moment, and, you know, this is the last one, so we are gonna try to give our best to make the best tournament possible, for sure, with no pressure.
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