Alcaraz Raises Profile With Vogue Feature

Dan Jackson/Vogue

Carlos Alcaraz continues to dip his toes into the world of fashion with a fresh feature story this month in Vogue. In the wide-ranging article, Alcaraz touches on his love for chess, his fashion sense and his admiration for Roger Federer, among many other topics.

Complete with photoshoot imagery of the 19-year-old, the longform piece provides new insight into the routines, habits and whims of the ATP Tour's newest superstar. Alcaraz also discusses what he called a "bad period" after he won the US Open last September for his first Grand Slam title.

"That sounds like I'm making it up," Alcaraz said, before explaining the stress that followed his achievement in New York, which made him the youngest No. 1 in the history of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.

Read an excerpt from the feature below.

Alcaraz grew up just over an hour from [the Ferrero academy], in a village outside Murcia called El Palmar, a place he still visits on weekends. Everyone knows one another, he says, and he has the same friends he hung out with as a child. Some 40 years ago his great-uncle built a tennis club there, on what was a clay-pigeon shooting range, and Alcaraz’s grandfather, Carlos, joined in the venture. Later, Alcaraz’s father—who played professional tennis until he couldn’t afford to continue—became the director. So Carlitos was born, he says, “with tennis in my blood.” His older brother, Álvaro (now 23), played in tournaments before him, and his younger brothers (ages 13 and 11) are as passionate about tennis as the rest of the family, including his mother, who until recently worked as a shop assistant at IKEA. Alcaraz got his first racket at the age of four, and, according to his father, cried when he had to stop playing to go home for dinner. His social life revolved around the tennis club.

By the time he was 12, he was a serious enough player that he was sponsored by Babolat and Lotto. A family friend who owns Postres Reina, a yogurt and dessert company based in Murcia, had already given him the money he needed to get to a junior tournament in Croatia, and continued to cover a lot of his travel costs. Ferrero first saw him play right around this time. “I’d already heard about him,” his coach says. “Especially the fact that he was doing a lot of different things—drop shots and lobs and running to the net, things that young kids don’t do, they just stay at the back, fight, and run. He was very dynamic, you could already see that.”

Alcaraz’s routine is those several hours of tennis a day, plus training and physical therapy, and a siesta after lunch. He eats whatever he wants, but healthily. In the evenings he’s trying to learn English. “I’ve improved, but I’ve got a long way to go!” Occasionally he’ll watch a movie, and prefers—fittingly—either what he calls suspense or motivation. Motivational movies? I ask, a little confused. “Yes,” he replies. “Sylvester Stallone. You know: Rocky Balboa.”

... One hobby is chess. “I love chess. Having to concentrate, to play against someone else, strategy—having to think ahead. I think all of that is very similar to the tennis court,” Alcaraz says. “You have to intuit where the other player is going to send the ball, you have to move ahead of time, and try to do something that will make him uncomfortable. So I play it a lot.”

Read the full Vogue feature here.