Carlos Alcaraz is already being pitted alongside the greats, including Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.
Alcaraz lost in the Monte Carlo Masters final to Jannik Sinner last week, bringing an end to his reign at the top of the ATP rankings.
The Spaniard has since been handed another setback at the Barcelona Open, where Alcaraz was forced to withdraw following his first-round match due to a wrist injury.
However, it has still been a very positive start to the season for Alcaraz, who completed the Career Grand Slam at the Australian Open, and Dominic Thiem has suggested he could even overtake Novak Djokovic’s major record.
Dominic Thiem suggests Carlos Alcaraz could overtake Novak Djokovic’s Grand Slam record
Thiem once practiced with a 16-year-old Alcaraz, and was full of praise when discussing him on the BTA Podcast.
The former US Open champion highlighted Alcaraz’s happiness on court, claiming that neither Federer, Nadal nor Djokovic have consistently shown this in their careers.
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Thiem went on to suggest that if Alcaraz is able to continue doing this then he could even overtake Djokovic’s Grand Slam record of 24 titles.
“You can see with him that he enjoys being on the court and he has that smile,” Thiem said about Alcaraz. “When he plays that drop shot when even the fastest opponent cannot make it, he just smiles at his box and enjoys the shot that he made.
“If he can keep that then I think it’s a combination where probably almost nobody can beat him if he can stay a bit of a kid. But with the ability of how he can play, the combination of those two is unbeatable.
“He had some weeks where he was not playing that well and you could see that the smile was gone a bit, that he was not feeling that great on court and straight away the results went down…If he can keep that for many more years, he’s a contender to maybe even beat Novak’s Grand Slam record.
“I think this is the first time that a player who’s winning that much is also enjoying what he is doing so obviously. Because Roger, Rafa, Novak, they were never smiling that much. Sometimes maybe ironically, but not from deep inside I would say.”
Dominic Thiem names four players he thinks could challenge Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner
Alcaraz and Sinner are the two dominant forces in men’s tennis right now, and have shared the last nine consecutive Grand Slam titles.
As a result, there is currently much debate about who could challenge Alcaraz and Sinner, and Thiem has suggested four names.
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Thiem was asked about German teenager Justin Engel, about whom he claimed it was too early to make a prediction about.
However, the Austrian did name both Joao Fonseca and Jakub Mensik, before Thiem claimed that Djokovic and Alexander Zverev remain very much in the picture.
“For example with Justin Engel, he has the potential, but he is still so young and you don’t know yet or you cannot say yet where he’s going to end up,” answered Thiem.
“Fonseca is really good, Joao Fonseca, he already proved it by winning Basel last year, so I think he’s already a contender for that. Mensik from Czech is still so young and he won Miami last year. I think if he finds a little bit more consistency he’s going to be top 10 and he’s so dangerous, he beat Jannik in Doha, so he can beat anybody.
“Of course there’s the guys that everybody knows like Sascha [Zverev], Novak is still there, those guys I don’t need to mention because they can beat them also any day.
“What is also interesting to me, is that we all know that there might be a kid somewhere that is 13, 14 years now, who is somewhere in the world now and is playing amazing, and who is going to come up in three, four years and nobody knows him yet, that is always possible.”
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