Tennis news: Carlos Alcaraz, Mark Philippoussis and Nick Kyrgios

Carlos Alcaraz was already a household name to tennis fans before he won Wimbledon in July, but after winning the major, Carlos Alcaraz’s Q factor has exploded. And that he is only 20 years old means he has many years left to grow his brand. Oh, and also win a ton more Grand Slam tournaments.

But Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime has a warning for him. In an interview with Le Journal de Montreal, Auger-Aliassime says that Alcaraz’s greatness makes him want to raise his own game. Specifically, Auger-Aliassime said that Carlos Alcaraz “awakens his competitive side,” and makes Auger-Aliassime want to “do the right things” in preparation for hopefully getting better.

The 22-year-old Auger-Aliassime actually leads the head-to-head over Alcaraz 3-1, including a victory at the US Open in 2021 when Alcaraz was forced to retire. In their only meeting this year, Alcaraz won at Indian Wells. Still, while Auger-Aliassime might be working harder to defeat Alcaraz, Alcaraz is only getting better as well.

Carlos Alcaraz is warned, Mark Philippoussis is fined, and Nick Kyrgios is tattooed

Mark Philippoussis has been fined $10,000 by the International Tennis Integrity Agency for “breaching betting sponsorship rules.” It appears that Philippoussis did not dispute the charge and cooperated in the investigation. To be clear, Philippoussis did not bet on tennis or anything like it. Instead, he lent his voice to promotional content for a gaming operator.

So, yeah. Philippoussis knew the rules, most likely, and broke them, but it sounds worse than it is. Philippoussis also was given a ban of four months, but that will only go into effect if Philippoussis is found to be guilty of working with bettors again.

Nick Kyrgios gets tatted

I guess Nick Kyrgios really likes Pokémon. In fact, he likes the game so much that he decided to get his entire back tattooed in a Pokémon theme at Ganga Studio in Los Angeles. In the Twitter post above, Kyrgios stated (on Instagram) that it took only one hour for the work to be done.

Also on Kyrgios’s Instagram post, his girlfriend, Costeen Hatzi, responded with just “Omg.” But his mom, Nill, seemed more stressed. She reacted the way most of us likely do to the tattoo by simply saying, “NO!!!”