King Carlos

He's the youngest player ever to reach number one in men's tennis. How far will Carlos Alcaraz go?

- By Gaby Wood

On a crisp, sunny day in southeastern Spain, a 19-year-old tennis player is training. As of last September, he is number one in the world and the youngest to hold his ranking since records began. Carlos Alcaraz, “Carlitos” to his friends, “Charlie” when talking to himself, has lived at this tennis academy in Villena for the past three years. The facility is built amid farmland, and lies between a high-security prison and a medieval castle. The new king of tennis trains here for two hours every morning—and there’s much more to come, he assures me, after the morning session is over. His schedule consists of “tennis, tennis, and more tennis.”

He slides and glides across the court. “Venga, venga, venga! ” he tells himself, clenching his fist. As the ball makes contact with the racket, his half-grunted, half-sung exhalations echo in the arid air, protracted: “Ehhhh!” He’s hitting with a lanky 15-year-old American named Darwin Blanch, who has the particular coltish gait of a teenager whose limbs have grown at high speed. Seeing the pair together highlights the extent to which the six-foot Alcaraz, who was of a similar build at that age, has grown to meet requirements. “Today most players are beasts,” his coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, tells me. (By contrast, Ferrero, who was world number one in 2003, was so slim and speedy as a player that he was nicknamed “El Mosquito.”) Ferrero is directing them to play two specific shots at a time, plus one of their own choice. Most players, he explains, “play to destroy, not to build. Carlos is physically explosive and very fast. I can’t make him play slowly, but I hope he’s capable of construction. He’s naturally creative. That’s a plus.”