By Guillermo Martinez and Silvio Castellanos
EL PALMAR/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The club that saw Spain’s tennis prodigy Carlos Alcaraz grow from a child into one of the top players on the ATP Tour have high hopes of him lifting the U.S. Open trophy on Sunday.
As Javier Abenza watched some of his youngest players at Murcia’s tennis school practising on the courts where he used to train side-by-side with Alcaraz, the 20-year-old coach recalls memories of his exhausting sessions with “Carlitos.”
“He was the one motivating, the one that told us ‘Let’s do this,'” Abenza told Reuters on Saturday. “When you were tired and the coach told us to practise another thing he used to say to me was ‘Come on Javi, I have to practice.'”
Abenza said he trained with Alcaraz for almost 10 years.
“He was always giving it all out, it was amazing. Training with him was 10 out of 10,” Abenza added.
With poise beyond his 19 years and enviable stamina, Alcaraz beat American Frances Tiafoe in five sets on Friday to secure another thrilling win and reach the U.S. Open final.
That did not surprise Ramon Abenza, who often saw how a young Alcaraz faced opponents four and five years older.
“He never shied away from training with people who were older than him,” the tennis coach said.
“When he was eight years old he loved to train with people of 12, 13 and he was not afraid of training, he always asked for more. He trained for two hours and he wanted more.”
NUMBER ONE
If Alcaraz, currently ranked number four, beats Norway’s Casper Ruud, 23, in Sunday’s U.S. Open final at Arthur Ashe Stadium he will become the youngest world number one in history.
“To me, it is more important to see him competing for the Grand Slams than reaching the number one spot,” Ramon said.
Alcaraz is a hero in El Palmar, a town of roughly 24,000 people in the Municipality of Murcia in South-East Spain.
A local baker, Victor Manuel Moreno, proudly showed off a cake he named after the young player in his coffee shop.
“This is a sweet that we made in honour of Carlos Alcaraz and his grandfather because his grandfather told him that in life you had to have three things, head, heart and cojones,” Moreno said of the round cakes.
“So we have baked El Palmar, Carlos Alcaraz cojones.”
In June a big mural in honour of Alcaraz was unveiled in one of the town’s main streets.
As the U.S. Open final approaches, anticipation is growing in Alcaraz’s home town and local authorities are organising an area to show the match on a giant screen.
After his semi-final victory on Friday, Alcaraz said he would tell his younger self to keep following his dream.
“If you work hard, all the hard work, it pays off,” he told reporters. “Right now you can see that all the hard work I put in every day is paying off.”
(Additional reporting by Rory Carroll in New York; Editing by Ken Ferris)
