Carlos Alcaraz receives harsh truth from Boris Becker

Carlos Alcaraz had a rough end to his year. After reaching the pinnacle of his sport by defeating Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final in five sets, Alcaraz appeared to be the new king of tennis and would run out the season by winning a bunch of tournaments and finish the year ranked No. 1. That obviously did not happen.

Instead, Djokovic won every tournament he entered, including beating Carlos Alcaraz in the Western and Southern Open and in the semifinals of the ATP Finals, and Djokovic finished atop the year-end ATP rankings once again. The new boss was the same as the old boss and the old boss was Djokovic too. Plus, Alcaraz was losing far earlier in a couple of tournaments than anyone would have anticipated.

Six-time Grand Slam champion and current Holger Rune coach, Boris Becker thinks he knows what is happening with Carlos Alcaraz’s poorer form. Becker recently told Eurosport Germany tennis podcast ‘Das Gelbe vom Ball,’ “My favorite saying in (consistently maintaining a high level of success) is: ‘The locker room never sleeps’. It means that the other players have realized how you have to play against Alcaraz to have a chance against him. That’s what happened. Other players have developed and Alcaraz hasn’t.”

Boris Becker drops some truth on Carlos Alcaraz

Goodness. On the surface that is some harsh realism for the 20-year-old Spaniard. Basically, other players have improved their games to beat him, but Alcaraz hasn’t improved his game as well.

Becker is one of the few players in the history of tennis who might understand what Carlos Alcaraz is going through. Alcaraz has two Grand Slams already, but Becker had also won two Wimbledons by the time he was 18 years old. Becker had to learn to adapt his game as well, and he succeeded for the most part. Becker finished with three wins at Wimbledon, two wins at the Australian Open, and he won the US Open once.

Becker does feel that Alcaraz will find a way to get better as well, though. Many commentators have said that the Spaniard needs to learn to be a little bit less aggressive. Backer said, Alcaraz and his coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, “task is to further develop his strengths. And I’m also convinced that we’ll see a very strong Carlos Alcaraz at the Australian Open 2024.”