This is just a second match on grass for Alcaraz after the physical and emotional toll of the Roland Garros final.<\/p>\n
He started strongly against Munar but grew unusually frustrated as the match went on, shouting at his team and disputing a time violation with the umpire midway through the second set.<\/p>\n
World number 59 Munar said before the match that his chances of an upset were “low” – but he came within touching distance of victory, thanks to some strong serving and deep, powerful forehands.<\/p>\n
After a composed first set, Alcaraz could not find the breakthrough in the second, with Munar saving three break points in a gritty display.<\/p>\n
Munar also missed nine break points and needed eight set points to eventually edge over the line after one hour and 41 minutes.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz held to love to start the deciding set and quickly went a break up, with Munar looking to have expended all his energy taking the second set.<\/p>\n
However, Munar broke back and led 4-3 30-0 before Alcaraz hit back, reeling off four points in a row to force the set back on level terms.<\/p>\n
There was a glimpse for Munar as Alcaraz went 0-30 down in his next service game – but, as the top players often do, Alcaraz simply found a way through, holding serve before capitalising as Munar served for a match tie-break.<\/p>\n
“It was a really tough battle. He’s a great competitor and showed how difficult it is to beat him,” Alcaraz added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is just a second match on grass for Alcaraz after the physical and emotional toll of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-197974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}