It started with a smile.
Carlos Alcaraz lost the first set to Lorenzo Musetti in their Monte Carlo final, and looked a little grim while doing it. He came out of the gates for his first title match at this tournament playing, as commentator Gilles Muller described it, “hectic” tennis. His shots sailed long and wide early, but rather than rein them in, he kept firing for the lines. Sometimes he rushed, and other times, his body was too far away from the ball; he never seemed settled.
On the other side of the court, Musetti was also playing his first final here, and his first Masters 1000 final anywhere. But he started with a burst of excited energy. Over the course of the week, he’d survived a series of near-fatal moments, and engineered four laborious comebacks with the help of a pro-Italian crowd. Deep in his bones, he may have been exhausted, but he rode his adrenaline to a 6-3 first set win, and closed it with an audacious forehand drop shot that even the speed-demon Spaniard couldn’t track down.
The change came after the first game of the second set, when Alcaraz walked to the corner to chat with his team. Whatever was said between them made him smile. We’re used to seeing that from him, of course, but the expression still came as something of a surprise at that perilous moment. Alcaraz, it appeared, still believed there were better things ahead.
