The testing world of Carlos Alcaraz: Everyone brings their best against him

To beat a superior being, Sebastian Korda reaches for a higher power. In the morning in Miami, he tells a Tennis Channel interviewer, he reads his Bible. Mark 9:23 to be precise, which says, “Everything is possible for one who believes”.

Even beating Carlos Alcaraz.

“Commitment and belief”, these are Korda’s weapons, not to mention a forehand and a serve as he wins 6-3, 5-7, 6-4. Yet it’s “commitment”, no matter what. It’s “belief”, even when Alcaraz breaks him when he’s serving for the match in the second set. The American is trying to create a consistent wave of shot-making to drown a Spaniard who metaphorically surfs 20-metre waves. This is one of the toughest tests in all sports.

There’s almost nothing Alcaraz hasn’t seen, met, worn or conquered. Sport offers the most rapid education, for he’s a professor at 22. He’s the current best because he’s able to mostly absorb the best of the rest on the planet. He’s the standard by which everyone measures themselves now: How far do I have to go? Play Alcaraz and you will know.

Of course, Alcaraz takes it to a third set. It’s like an automatic gear change that occurs within. Or, if you like, the instinctive reaction of a predator to danger. But this is why we pay to watch the exceptional, not just because of what they win, but how they win, how they solve riddles and untwist mazes and rise. 

There is an ancient, unchanging truth to one v one sport: Once someone raised you – maybe Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic – and now you elevate the field. Everyone keeps each other on their toes. Years ago, when Naomi Osaka was in her ascendancy, she said: “Someone wanting to play their best against me is something I have to feel fortunate about because it’s how I get better.”

People bringing their sharpest game against you, as Korda, who peaked at a high of world No. 15 in 2024, did against Alcaraz, is both a compliment and a burden. Dustin Brown was honest at least at Wimbledon 2015 when he felled Rafael Nadal: “It’s easy for me to play my game against someone like him because I have nothing to lose.”

Against Daniil Medvedev, who he lost to at Indian Wells, Alcaraz said: “He was playing unreal, I’ve got to say. I have never seen, to be honest, Daniil playing like this.” It must be tiring when players see his scalp as the ultimate prize and yet it must invigorate him. The Spaniard, like Jannik Sinner, is a child of challenge. They are creatures given to polite showing off: When someone asks hard questions, they reply, watch me.

“Luckily,” Alcaraz says after the Korda match, “I have a lot of weapons, a lot of things that I can do on the court to try (and make) him uncomfortable, which today I couldn’t find.” He – the reigning French, US and Australian Open champion – is mystified and so are we because we’re so used to champions dipping into their inner vaults to find plan D because A, B, C haven’t worked. When everything’s on the line, they hit them, masters of margins and moments.

In 2015, bewildered after a loss to Andreas Seppi at the Australian Open, Federer said: “I guess I won the wrong points out there.” Alcaraz, too, confesses to the same against Korda. “Even though he was playing, I would say, above his normal level, I was there. A lot of 30-30s, a lot of deuces, break points to me. I didn’t make it.” It’s OK, you want to say, mathematicians make errors, wire walkers stumble and Alcaraz is allowed to fall.

Korda, who refuses to wilt in the third set, knows this win is extraordinary, yet it has real meaning if it alters him and takes him to another level. For him this could be a springboard, for Alcaraz it’s a blip to be forgotten. Greatness is an act of short memory.

As clay beckons the Spaniard, who plays with the smiling abandon of a child in the dust, a register will be opened. Sport has always been a kind of accountancy and as of March 2026, Alcaraz’s win-loss is 17-2. Two finals in four tournaments and both won. Impressive yet not exceptional.

These days GOAT-stuff is measured primarily in grand slams, but there was a time when the year’s entire labour was intrinsic to the argument. In 1984, McEnroe’s win-loss record was a ridiculous 82-3 and yet it paled before Martina Navratilova’s glittering 1983.

She played 87 matches and lost only once all year, at the French Open. This was greatness built of multiple acts of resistance, by a champion able to win on off days, sick days, annoyed days, uninspired days. After her loss, Navratilova won her next 50 matches and who can tell where Alcaraz will go next. History has high standards and that’s what this man of fast feet is chasing.