Former player John McEnroe called Carlos Alcaraz 'one in a billion' in a recent interview and it does truly look like that.
The ATP Rankings have hundreds of players on them, and while most of them are very good at tennis, only a selected few ever reach the status that Alcaraz has. It simply doesn't happen because being a good tennis player requires a dose of natural talent, a tremendous work ethic, and a bit of luck.
In the same way, most people can't sing as well as Whitney, Etta, and Aretha; most people also can't swing the racquet as well as Carlos, Rafa, Novak, or Roger. It just won't happen, and nobody knows it better than John McEnroe, who is one of those who swung the racquet pretty well.
He looked back on his career in a recent interview, admitting how improbable it is to become as great as he became at tennis. There are so many things that need to go right, even if you have that natural talent, and for too many people, it never happens.
He used the example of Alcaraz calling him one in a billion because, as McEnroe put it, for every person that 'makes it,' there are millions of those that don't.
For every person you hear that succeeds, there’s a million that don’t. Not everyone’s Carlos Alcaraz, he’s one in a billion. He’s just a freak. He’s an incredible player, but most kids have no business doing that.
Even among tennis circles, his trajectory has been nothing short of legendary. He became the youngest number one ever, which boggles the mind when you think of the amount of talent tennis had over its history.
Even in recent history with Djokovic, Federer, and Nadal, he still did something they never did. That's special, freakishly so, as McEnroe put it.
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