Carlos Alcaraz shares Queen’s ploy to win Wimbledon as injury fears addressed

Carlos Alcaraz says that he isn’t placing any expectations on his Wimbledon chances after the same mindset saw him win Queen’s. The Spaniard lifted his first grass-court title on Sunday and will return to No 1 in the world as a result. And Alcaraz addressed injury fears after receiving a medical time out during his 6-4 6-4 win over Alex De Minaur.

Alcaraz was crowned the champion at Queen’s in what was just his third professional grass tournament and the first outside of Wimbledon. At the start of the week, the world No 2 downplayed his chances of winning the title and said he didn’t have many expectations.

But as the week went on, the 20-year-old started labelling some of his matches as his best yet on the surface. And he rounded it off by defeating De Minaur to lift his 11th trophy and first on the surface.

Alcaraz is now trying to use the same tactic for Wimbledon as he again played down his hopes of winning. “No expectation. You know, if I have no expectation, I’m gonna win it,” he grinned when asked about his expectations at the All England Club.

Alcaraz did confess that he now felt like he was one of the title contenders at SW19 after his run this week. “But, no, honestly, yeah, I have a lot of confidence right now coming into Wimbledon,” he added.

“I ended the week playing at the high level. So right now I feel one of the favourites, you know, to win Wimbledon. But honestly, I have to get more experience on grass. Even if I win the title, I just played 11 matches in my career on grass, so I have to get more experience, more hours.

“But obviously after beating amazing guys, you know, great players, and the level that I played, I consider myself one of the favourites or one of the players to be able to win Wimbledon.” However, he knew there was one true title favourite – Novak Djokovic.

But the 11-time title winner wasn’t worried. He explained: “I mean, it appears here in the final. This is something I didn’t feel during the week, but I think it’s normal. It’s something that all the players, you know, feel some problems, you know, during the week, during the year, and you have to take care about.

“But it’s nothing serious. We are gonna work this week before Wimbledon, you know, to be at or 100 per cent to Wimbledon, but, you know, it is something that I’m not too worried about.”