Alcaraz says defeat to Bergs was one of his most painful

“It is one of the defeats that has hurt me the most,” Alcaraz said after losing to Bergs in Shanghai. The Spaniard also described it as one of his most painful recent losses. Knocked out in the third round of the Chinese Masters 1000, he admitted that he had not played well.

“I felt very good. It hurt that I couldn’t adapt as well as possible to the conditions today,” he explained. He had arrived at the tournament rested and eager to compete, but said he was disappointed by the poor level he had shown. During the break between the two sets, he had already complained about being unable to anticipate the bounces: “I can’t shout based on intuition!”

In his view, the problem included trajectories that were difficult to read. “It’s very strange. When you hit a second-serve return from high to low, the ball can’t bounce above your head, and then on the next point it bounced completely differently,” he observed. At times the ball sprang upwards; at others, it skidded and moved forwards after landing.

Alcaraz nevertheless refused to use that as an excuse. He described having different sensations and said he would anticipate one kind of bounce, only to be left reacting too late when the ball behaved differently. He suggested he might need to change how he played and read the ball’s path.

He said he felt “a little disoriented” by sensations that were much slower than in the first round and during practice. His opponent also mentioned unusual bounces on court, while saying that the surface and balls were generally very good.

Alcaraz acknowledged that Bergs had enjoyed some fortune in certain exchanges and made the most of it, while he had not been so fortunate. He also called his own level “very poor”, answering “all of them” when asked which parts of his game had disappointed him. He praised Bergs’s “very good” performance and serve.

This was Alcaraz’s least successful appearance in the tournament across his three participations; his best result remains a quarter-final in 2024. He now wants to head home, return to the practice courts and give his best at the next tournament. “I still feel fresh and I’m looking forward to the tournaments coming up,” he concluded.