{"id":339847,"date":"2025-08-13T00:58:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T00:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/339847\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T00:58:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T00:58:10","slug":"alcaraz-eases-into-cincinnati-open-fourth-round-with-victory-against-medjedovic-carlos-alcaraz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/339847\/","title":{"rendered":"Alcaraz eases into Cincinnati Open fourth round with victory against Medjedovic | Carlos Alcaraz"},"content":{"rendered":"

The men\u2019s second seed Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> continued to rebuild his on-court momentum and rhythm after a brief summer break by defeating the talented young Serbian Hamad Medjedovic 6-4, 6-4 to reach the fourth round of the Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n

The victory was a positive step for Alcaraz after a rusty performance in his opener against Damir Dzumhur on Sunday, where he won a turbulent three-set contest in his first match since losing the Wimbledon final against Jannik Sinner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Instead of immediately focusing on the North American hard court swing, with the Canadian Open in Toronto starting two weeks after Wimbledon, Alcaraz took some time off. He took a week off from practice and holidayed in El Puerto de Santa Maria, in southern Spain, before two weeks training at home in El Palmar, Murcia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I\u2019m off, I\u2019m off,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t step in the gym at all. A lot of times if we go for a trip, sometimes my friends go to the gym. The first week that I had off I just told them: \u2018I\u2019m gonna join you for a little run.\u2019 But then I woke up and I said: \u2018Go, and I\u2019m going to keep sleeping.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Medjedovic presented a genuine challenge for Alcaraz. A winner at the Next Gen ATP Finals in 2023, two years after Alcaraz\u2019s victory there, the 22-year-old is armed with a big serve and an enormous forehand. However, his footwork, conditioning and intensity are all lacking at the highest level. With the exception of a brief blip in the second set, where he momentarily lost his serve, Alcaraz played a solid match and he continually exposed Medjedovic\u2019s movement as he marched into the fourth round.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know he\u2019s a really powerful player,\u201d Alcaraz said after his 50th victory of the year, which gives him four consecutive seasons with 50-plus wins. That hasn\u2019t happened on the ATP Tour since Novak Djokovic accomplished the feat in 2013-16. \u201cHis shots are incredibly hard to return. He has a big serve also. I know he doesn\u2019t like to run too much from side to side, so my plan was to make him run as much as I could.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was difficult because his ball flies and it comes really fast, but I\u2019m just glad that I did it most of the time, tried to defend in a good way. I\u2019m just really happy to get the win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alcaraz will next face Luca Nardi, a lucky loser, after the 16th seed Jakub Mensik became the latest player to suffer in the heat, retiring from his third-round match against Nardi when trailing 6-2, 2-1. In the women\u2019s draw Coco Gauff advanced to the fourth round after a walkover against Dayana Yastremska, the 32nd seed, who withdrew on Tuesday due to illness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The men\u2019s second seed Carlos Alcaraz continued to rebuild his on-court momentum and rhythm after a brief summer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-339847","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\/339847","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=339847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}