Both Andy Roddick and Coco Vandeweghe have once again been left in awe by Carlos Alcaraz.
After all, the Spaniard continues to shatter records with each passing week, having currently extended his best-ever winning run by claiming a second Queen’s title on Sunday.
At just 22 years old, what he is already doing within the sport is unthinkable. What’s scary is that this is just the beginning.
Sooner or later, he will surely be spoken about alongside the Big Three who came before him and changed tennis like never before.
In fact, Vandeweghe has even gone as far as to say that Carlos Alcaraz has surpassed them in one area already.
Carlos Alcaraz told he’s already surpassing the Big Three
Speaking on the Tennis Channel Live podcast, it was Roddick who first gave his assessment of Alcaraz’s incredible week, which resulted in yet another trophy.
Told that the youngster is halfway to matching his four Queen’s titles, the former number one replied: ‘Yeah, I would trade in all of those for just two more points, for his Wimbledon title. I promise you, I don’t think he’s too concerned about my Queen’s titles.
‘You know, he’s just doing everything so well. When he’s in full flight, his shot selection becomes so clear, right? And when he’s not, I feel like he kind of struggles on when to pull the trigger, and maybe we saw that for the first three or four months of the year.
‘There is none of that now. He’s not missing second serve returns, he’s spreading the court with his first serve, he’s hitting his first serve through the court. He’s hitting the chip when he needs to. He’s flattening on the backhand when he needs to. You don’t really question any of the shots that he’s choosing.
‘Oh, and by the way, he has the ability to hit all of them. Tough, tough one for Lehecka.’
Vandeweghe then offered her verdict: ‘It’s always going to be a tough matchup for anybody out there to play Carlos Alcaraz.
‘And what amazes me each and every time I watch him transition from hard to clay to grass, is how well his game just seamlessly just moves on to the next surface.
‘I don’t think we’ve seen any player really do that. I mean, we can think of the greats of Roger Federer and Rafa and even Novak, and they all struggled for a little bit especially in their early years to get that transition from the different surfaces and make their games work.
‘They had to implement other tactics and try and work it out, and sometimes they could and sometimes they couldn’t. But Carlos Alcaraz, he does it within the first game, first point in a match in his first tournament on grass.’
Ironically, Alcaraz was told he copied a Nadal trait during his run last week.
How Carlos Alcaraz compares to the Big Three at his age
Of the Big Three, Rafael Nadal was the true young phenomenon out of them all.
After all, he burst onto the scene at the age of just 19, winning his first Grand Slam title in Paris. He then went on to win the next three in a row.
Shockingly, Alcaraz and Nadal were exactly the same age when they won their fifth Grand Slam title.
Roger Federer, meanwhile, only won his first Wimbledon at the age of 21. However, the following year he won three of the four available Grand Slam titles, and so by the time he was 22, he had four major titles.
And finally, Novak Djokovic’s journey took slightly more time, as there was a three-year gap between his first and second Grand Slam titles.
He won his first aged just 20 in Melbourne, but then had to wait until 2011 before he followed in Federer’s footsteps to win three of the four majors that year. However, at 22, he had just a single Grand Slam.
Alcaraz already has five, and has another three full Grand Slams to play in before he turns 23.
