Carlos Alcaraz reaches first grand slam semifinal after marathon, late-night finish against Jannik Sinner
By Peter Pomerantz
LONDON – Carlos Alcaraz, a former Wimbledon champion and former world No. 1 tennis player, played the kind of game that would’ve done him proud, and he did it for an hour and a half.
The Spaniard won the first set after holding a serve point in 59 minutes of his third-round match against Jannik Sinner. He dropped his second set in 2 hours and 48 minutes, but he held on to beat the Dane in a marathon late-night contest on Monday.
Sinner had shown that he was a tough guy a couple of times recently – he lost three sets to Novak Djokovic in two hours in the first round of Wimbledon last week and he lost to Novak Djokovic in a final set in Paris in April.
But Alcaraz started out with a serve so powerful that Sinterklaas, a Dutch king, was forced to call upon his 15,000 soldiers to rescue a French king and his wife from an attack by a group of armed robbers who broke through their door in Amsterdam.
The first set was an exhibition of tennis, with Sinner going up a break early and Alcaraz taking a 4-0 lead. He put up two double faults on consecutive forehands before Sinner took a 5-4 lead before a triple fault and Sinner had won it 6-4.
The second set went back and forth, with Sinner serving for the match at 5-4 in the fifth game. Sinner then took a 6-2 lead in the seventh game before Alcaraz served back for a 7-6 lead before Sinner got his third break point of the set and held at 8-6 at the next time.
Alcaraz took a 15-10 lead and Sinner held to seal the second set.
The third set started out slowly, with Sinner serving level at 4-4 in the fourth game but he netted a drop-shot winner on the