WIMBLEDON – There were just a few minutes left until Carlos Alcaraz, the hot kid now at the All-England Club the way so many tennis kids before him had been exactly that, was about to take one of the great walks there is to take in his sport. It is the one the defending men’s champion takes the year after he has won here, when he is about to play the first match on Centre Court at the next Wimbledon.And in so many big and important ways, this walk perfectly described the tennis place, what can feel like the only tennis place, where they look back at the past as respectfully as they do, but keep looking to the future as well. And the future of men’s tennis, for now and perhaps for a long time if he is blessed with good health, is the 21-year-old Alcaraz.“It’s kind of a wonderful and delicate balance here, looking behind us and looking ahead at the same time, isn’t it,” a young volunteer named Chris Wood said at Centre Court while he waited for Alcaraz the way Wimbledon did.So Alcaraz would take the walk that Jimmy Connors did when he was the hot kid here. Alcaraz would take the walk, as the reigning French Open champ, that Bjorn Borg took five times as the reigning French Open champ. Then John McEnroe came along to finally stop Borg’s streak of five straight Wimbledons. It would be Pete Sampras later, again and again, and then Roger Federer winning one more Wimbledon than Pete’s seven. The first time Rafael Nadal took the walk was after beating Federer in one of the most unforgettable Wimbledon finals of them all. And then as Novak Djokovic was in the process of passing both Federer and Nadal on the all-time list of men’s major champions, he took the walk that Alcaraz took Monday afternoon seven different times himself.It was getting near 1:30 when first the ball boys and ball girls appeared on the grass, entering to applause, before the men and women who would call the lines then appeared, also to applause. There were already matches being played on the outside courts, the walkways between some of those courts filled with first-week traffic. But this was different now. This was as if Alcaraz were about to walk out on the grass as if walking to the mound on Opening Day, about to throw the first pitch of the season.Then there he was, appearing from a doorway underneath the Royal Box to a huge thunderclap of noise, alongside his first-round opponent, a big hitter from Estonia named Mark Lajal. Now Alcaraz, who came back from losing the first set of the final 6-1 to beat Djokovic in five sets, was experiencing this particular honor, at this tournament, at the most famous tennis court in this world.It would not be easy for him on this day. He played a lot of loose points in the first two sets and Lajal — who had all this blond peacock hair on top of his head — came out swinging away, going toe-to-toe with the champ and holding his own. He is 21, same as Alcaraz is, and he was having a moment for himself in the first two sets, which Alcaraz finally won — barely — at 7-6 and 7-5.But the beauty of Alcaraz’s talent and of his star power is that he is very much of the moment. He finally saw the set go to 3-all in the tiebreaker. There was a chance here for Lajal to make this an even more difficult day for Alcaraz on Centre than it already was, in addition to being a much longer one.But after diving for a Lajal shot and missing, Alcaraz got to 4-3 and then 5-3 after a service winner and then 6-3, giving himself a pocketful of set points after one of those forehands is that seem to come off his racket at about 200 miles per hour.In the second set, Lajal, who had continued to stay with him, had 40-0 on his serve at 5-all, but then here came Alcaraz again, seizing this moment and really seizing the day, launching rockets from all over the baseline again. In the middle of all that, he seemed to come running from one of the outside courts to cover a short ball from Lajal and feather a crosscourt winner. A couple of minutes later he was up two sets, and after that the rest was just bookkeeping.“I still get nerves and excitement a lot stepping on this court,” this kid, as exciting a kid out of Spain as Nadal once was, said when it was over. “It’s such a privilege. It’s the most beautiful court I’ve played on. I practiced here for 45 mins last Thursday and it’s the first time I’ve been nervous during a practice. Just walking around here I got goosebumps.”He also said this:“During the match, the memories of last year came back a little bit but I tried not to think about it. That was a totally different tournament and I have to be focused on my game to achieve the same as last year.”He will have to play better than he did on Monday afternoon to win Wimbledon, do what Borg and Nadal and Federer and Djokovic and Rod Laver had done before him, win the French and Wimbledon the same year. But as he tries, and even with the second-week competition he will get from Yannik Sinner, the Australian Open champ, and maybe even from Djokovic as he takes his own shot after recent surgery to repair a torn meniscus, you know this: Alcaraz is the player to watch here. He is the biggest star of his sport.He’s that young guy now. He’s the one. The delicate balance between the past and the future is him.
sekar nallalu Cryptocurrency,Sports,Wimbeldon At Wimbledon, Carlos Alcaraz is both reigning king and heir apparent