The US Open is now in full swing and with second round matches underway, Botic van de Zandschulp, currently ranked #74, took on Carlos Alcaraz, current world #3. Last night’s match might not have had many tuning in at first, but as it went on, more came to watch van de Zandschulp’s straight set victory over Alcaraz.
The match itself started as any other would for Alcaraz, all fun and games and smiles. That quickly diminished when van de Zandschulp won the first set 6-1 within no time. Alcaraz tried to come back and brought the second set score to 5-5, just for van de Zandschulp to break and hold the last two games to win it 7-5.
Alcaraz stepped off court before the third set gesturing toward his team, and the Tennis Channel commentators wondering if he was struggling to get his head right. When Alcaraz came back it seemed as though he was in the right mindset, for the first game. He lost it again though, just as quickly as it came, losing the third set 4-6.
At 28 years old, Botic van de Zandschulp was planning on retiring due to both his age and progressively worse play this year. “While he was ranked outside the top 100,” Australian Open News wrote, he lost in the first round of Roland Garros, shortening his clay season.
Yet the win over Alcaraz isn’t surprising for van de Zandschulp’s fans. In recent years, he beat Andrey Rublev, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Casper Ruud (twice), Cameron Norrie, and Taylor Fritz. All of these wins, however, have been at smaller tournaments. “This is the first time that van de Zandschulp has beaten a top 10 player at a major,” wrote The Sporting Base.
Carlos Alcaraz, however, won Roland Garros and Wimbledon this year, one of the hardest back-to-back major tournaments to win. Alcaraz is 21 years old and won the US Open in 2022, his first major title. Currently ranked #3 in the world, no one thought he would lose in the second round. NBC reported, “it was Alcaraz’s earliest loss at any major tournament since he bowed out in the second round of Wimbledon in 2021 as a teen.”
But maybe there were hints of last night’s breakdown. A couple weeks ago, in Cincinnati, Alcaraz was playing one of the smaller tournaments of the year and after he lost a point in the third set, Alcaraz destroyed his racket by repeatedly smashing it on the court,” ESPN wrote concerningly after Alcatraz’s apology during a later press conference.
Last night’s commentators speculated Alcaraz couldn’t find his sweet spot on the court surface, after the switch from clay at Roland Garros to the grass at Wimbledon, and now, the hard courts at the US Open.
In the end, van de Zandschulp came out on top of this match, 6-1, 7-5, 6-4. Overall, both players have had their ups and downs this past season, but as The New York Times pointed out, “the worst time to play the worst match of your career is when your opponent is playing the best match of theirs.”
