{"id":35822,"date":"2025-04-20T14:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T14:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/35822\/"},"modified":"2025-04-20T14:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T14:44:08","slug":"carlos-alcaraz-struggled-mentally-and-had-to-calm-himself-down-in-barcelona-open-match-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/35822\/","title":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz ‘struggled mentally’ and had to calm himself down in Barcelona Open match | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> revealed that he had \u2018struggled mentally\u2019 during his Barcelona Open clash with Alex de Minaur<\/a>. The Spaniard ultimately prevailed on Friday as he looks to reclaim his crown in his homeland, having won the title in 2022 and 2023.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz impressed as he booked his spot in the final four of the competition, securing a 7-5 6-3 victory over De Minaur to set up a clash with Arthur Fils \u2013 who progressed into the semi-finals after Stefanos Tsitsipas<\/a> retired from their quarter-final match after just a matter of minutes.<\/p>\n

Despite Alcaraz\u2019s wealth of experience, the four-time Grand Slam winner admitted that he struggled to mentally deal with his serving early in the match. He explained: \u201cI started quite badly with the serve, I was struggling a little bit mentally with [it].<\/p>\n

“It was just the first few games with my serve, then I think I improved a lot. I calmed myself down and started to think positively again. Alex started strong, playing aggressively, and the first set was really tight.”<\/p>\n

The 21-year-old will be pleased to have finally put another top-10 opponent to the sword this year, having only secured one win over a direct rival in 2025 prior to beating De Minaur.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz will be hoping to continue his good form when he takes on Fils today (Saturday). Following his walkover against Tsitsipas, Fils said: \u201cI was ready to battle for a few hours because he\u2019s a champion. Every time we play we have tough matches. My wish is he\u2019s going to be ready for the next weeks and for the French Open. I wish him the best. I don\u2019t know what he had but I wish him the best.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have another great match against Carlitos. We had a great fight in Monte Carlo. Let\u2019s hope we have a nice fight tomorrow as well. Of course. The last match was very positive. Of course, I lost it, but still very positive.<\/p>\n

\u201cTomorrow is going to be different. We are in Spain. He\u2019s playing great here. I think he won twice already. So yeah, it\u2019s going to be a nice one. I watched a little bit of the match against Alex\u2026 Let\u2019s see how it goes tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz revealed that he had \u2018struggled mentally\u2019 during his Barcelona Open clash with Alex de Minaur. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[11809,11678,17891,6359,79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-35822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-alex-de-minaur","9":"tag-arthur-fils","10":"tag-barcelona-open","11":"tag-carlos-alcaraz","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tennis","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114370829681227190","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35822","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=35822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}