Carlos Alcaraz is usually known as a tennis player with an uncanny knack for staying calm and cool, unlike most other 21-year-olds. He’s leveraged his ability to stay relaxed under pressure to win four Grand Slam singles titles, including at the French Open and Wimbledon this year, and then followed that up by winning a silver medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics. He’s also won 15 ATP Tour titles and was the youngest male player to ever achieve the No. 1 ranking in the world.
But every person has a breaking point when they simply need to let their emotions out, and that point happened to Alcaraz on Friday. Playing in his first match since falling to Novak Djokovic in the gold medal match at the Olympics, Alcaraz—the current No. 3 ranked player in the world—took on No. 34 Gail Monfils in the second round of the Cincinnati Open. By virtue of being a top seed, Alcaraz received a first-round bye, but the extra rest didn’t do him any good in southwestern Ohio. The match originally started on Thursday but rain caused the suspension of play, with the match then resuming on Friday. Monfils managed to pull off one of the shockers of this tennis season, defeating the Spaniard 4–6, 7–6 (7–5), 6–4.
