Carlos Alcaraz crushed Hamad Medjedovic 6-4, 6-4 at the Cincinnati Masters on Tuesday, becoming the first player in 2025 to reach 50 match wins.
Alcaraz’s latest impressive performance came amid swelteringly hot conditions, with his opponent struggling amid the burning temperatures.
Yet Alcaraz found a way to stay cool in the key moments, as he appears to be moving through the gears ahead of a potential final against his big rival Jannik Sinner on Sunday.
“I know he’s a really powerful player,” said Alcaraz. “His shots are incredibly hard to return. He has a big serve also. I know he doesn’t like to run too much from side to side, so my plan was to make him run as much as I could.
“It was difficult because his ball flies and it comes really fast, but I’m just glad that I did it most of the time, tried to defend in a good way. I’m just really happy to get the win.”
This week offers Alacarz a big chance to start eating into Sinner’s huge lead at the top of the ATP Rankings, with the Italian defending maximum points in the next few weeks after he won the Cincinatti Masters and the US Open last year.
It means that Sinner is defending 3,500 in this week’s tournament and the final Grand Slam of the year in New York, while Alcaraz has just 60 points to defend from his early defeats in both tournaments in 2024.
Alcaraz won two Grand Slam titles last year at the French Open and Wimbledon, but he is on course to collect a lot more match wins this year, as he won 54 matches in total by the end of 2024.
That total was impacted by injuries and a dip in form in the final weeks of last year, but Alcaraz appears to be coming to the boil in good time once again ahead of the New York major.
He will aim to win the title in Cincinnati this week before playing with Emma Raducanu at the US Open, in what will be one of the most eagerly anticipated doubles pairings of the new-look mixed doubles event.
Then Alcaraz will look to get down to the serious business of winning the US Open and if he achieves that magical goal, he will be knocking on the door of the world No 1 ranking heading into the final weeks of the tennis year.
