Carlos Alcaraz admits he usually feels nervous at the start of a tournament and adds that playing someone for the first time doesn’t help either.
After a first-round bye, the second-seeded Spaniard ousted Quentin Halys 6-4 6-2 in the first match of his Indian Wells Masters title defense.
The two-time Indian Wells winner, who didn’t sound too happy about the tournament changing its hard courts this year, appeared a bit tense early in the match although he managed to claim an early break in the third set. When serving for the first set in the 10th game, he faced a break point but managed to save it and bag the opener.
From that moment on, Alcaraz started playing much more freely and he started the second set with back-to-back breaks and a 4-0 lead before serving out for the match in the eighth game.
It was the first meeting between the four-time Grand Slam champion and 59th-ranked Halys.
Alcaraz on why he feels nervous in the first match of a tournament
“Well, because it’s it’s kind of new. I mean, I have played the tournaments a lot of times, but every year is kind of different. Different feelings, different, I gonna say different everything,” the 21-year-old explained.
“This is the first time, if I’m not wrong, that I’m playing against Halys, for example, so I didn’t know how it’s gonna be at the beginning. So that’s why I was a little bit nervous.
“Obviously talking about this tournament, it’s something that I really want to go far, and probably it is an extra pressure. That’s why I was a little bit nervous.
“So I try to show that I wasn’t, but I think it is normal and it’s gonna be like that in every tournament, I guess.”
In his next match, Alcaraz will fight against Denis Shapovalov for a place in the Indian Wells round-of-16. While the world No. 3 won their lone meeting in straight sets at the 2023 French Open, the in-form Canadian probably won’t be an easy opponent, considering that he won Dallas and made the Acapulco semifinal in his last two tournaments.
