“An heir to the throne” Carlos Alcaraz hailed as Rafael Nadal’s successor by Feliciano Lopez, but says there’s a ‘lot of pressure’
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Carlos Alcaraz, Rafael Nadal
Carlos Alcaraz has left his mark on the tennis world with a lot of brilliant performances at just the beginning of his career. He is riding the wave of successes of his recently conquered quests including the Miami Open 2022 and the Barcelona Open 2022, which has propelled the teenage star into the ATP top 10 list. The brilliant tennis and the fighting spirit displayed by the strapping young lad sort of turn back the clock from when Rafael Nadal was young.
This young man is a Spaniard who is a countryman of Rafa and has emulated Rafa’s feat in entering the ATP top 10 and is looking more and more like once in a generation talent like the Big-3 in tennis. Alcaraz packs the punch of Rafa and has the maturity of a veteran of many tournaments. Feliciano López, the Spanish tennis player and the director of Mutua Madrid Open, the tournament where both Nadal and Alcaraz are present gives his statement for the same.
Carlos Alcaraz- Rafael Nadal matchup is the best thing right now.
Feliciano Lopez, a former world number 12 and the winner of 7 ATP titles is also the tournament director in Madrid. He spoke to ‘El Larguero’ of Cadena SER to give the following remarks on different topics concerning the current edition of the Madrid Open. He quipped:
“I don’t see a better match right now than an Alcaraz-Nadal. Hopefully, the tournament is very close. Nadal debuts on Wednesday, Carlos is coming off winning in Barcelona… It would be a hypothetical match that everyone wants to see.”
He also has a very lucid thought about the whole successor conundrum. He says:
“It’s a very difficult situation. Rafa is someone who goes beyond sports, people adore him, but people are also very excited about Carlos now, they see him as Nadal’s successor, the heir to the throne. Rafa is doing very well sitting on the throne, but it is very nice to have Nadal as a reference for Carlos. They compare him a lot with him, it is a lot of pressure. Being compared to Nadal is not the best thing that can happen to you. But he is very mature for his age, he has a very good environment with Juan Carlos Ferrero and that helps him a lot. It is very difficult to manage all that. Everyone is interested in him, and that is very difficult to manage for an 18-year-old boy but he is doing very well”.
There is a possibility for the fans to witness the Nadal-Alcaraz rematch after the young lad’s defeat to his idol in the semifinal of the Indian Wells, and the fans are craving this encounter.
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Prateek Sinha
(365 Articles Published)