Alcaraz frustrated by balls reacting differently in Shanghai

“One ball bounces, the other one skids,” Carlos Alcaraz said of the playing conditions in Shanghai. The Spaniard was facing Belgian Zizou Bergs on the centre court in the third round of the Masters 1000 on Monday. He complained several times during the first set, unsettled by the balls behaving differently from one another.

“I can’t play on instinct. It can’t be that one ball bounces and the other one skids. I can’t play like this,” he insisted, also letting out a swear word. His coach, Samuel López, replied that they would look for solutions. He urged Alcaraz to stay true to his game: “If you lose, you lose, but with your game.”

The coach also offered practical instructions: use his topspin backhand more often, hit decisively and accept errors rather than hold back. He added that the slice could be used to disrupt the rhythm, while warning that Alcaraz sometimes risked disrupting his own momentum.

There was another pause after the first set, when Bergs went to the locker rooms for eight minutes. Alcaraz’s complaints and López’s advice brought the challenge into focus: finding his bearings in these conditions, while his coach tried to steer him back towards his own tennis.