Many British tennis fans may have thought they would not see Norrie playing at this level again.<\/p>\n
A forearm injury last year contributed to his ranking plummeting towards the bottom of the top 100 but, after soul-searching talks with his team after the Miami Open in March, he has rediscovered his form.<\/p>\n
Since then, Norrie has reached the French Open fourth round before forging another deep Grand Slam run at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
Heading to party island Ibiza for a break is a strategy which has also served Alcaraz well.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz plays at his fluent best when he is completely relaxed and barely thinking about the shots he is producing \u2013 although he can be prone to occasionally losing concentration.<\/p>\n
He found the perfect balance against Norrie.<\/p>\n
His deft touches at the net brought gasps of appreciation, and the explosive power and pinpoint accuracy of his baseline strokes were met by exhales of breath.<\/p>\n
Norrie, simply, had no answer. Alcaraz lost just nine more points after seeing off the four break points and clinched the opening set after only 28 minutes.<\/p>\n
Even when Norrie earned a break-back point at 3-2 in the second set, there was no mercy.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz upped his serve and battered down three deliveries over 130mph to hold, breaking again to clinch the set and refusing to let his level drop in the third.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many British tennis fans may have thought they would not see Norrie playing at this level again. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-248750","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":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114819202071356306","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248750","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=248750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}