Alcaraz

Will turn 22 on

  • 5/3/2025

What he’s done since last summer

  • Won three ATP Challenger titles
  • Reached the third round of Roland Garros (2021)
  • Earned his first Top 20 win (David Goffin)

Key Stat

  • From January 2020 to April 2021, Alcaraz moved up 372 spots in the rankings.

The Spanish teenager began his march up the ATP rankings at the start of 2020, and if quarantine had any impact on his progress, it only made him stronger. Two pre-lockdown victories on the Futures level foreshadowed a dominant summer on the Challenger circuit, winning three titles out of four finals to punctuate a leap of over 350 spots.

An ostensibly meteoric rise began in earnest a few years earlier, when he joined an academy run by former world No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero. Ferrero, who now travels with the 18-year-old, won his French Open title in 2003—several weeks after Alcarez was born.

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"I think my career was very similar when I was his age," Ferrero told ATPTour.com last fall. “He has played a few tournaments already and has a title, so in a way we are having similar careers in these early stages. I had a good career, but he can do even better."

On the verge of a Top 100 debut, Alcaraz began the new year with a first Top 20 win over David Goffin, and made his first ATP semifinal in Andalucia. The early success is already drawing comparisons to Rafael Nadal, who he went on to play at the Mutua Madrid Open.

“He has to be ambitious,” says Ferrero, “and never settle.”

Since then, Alcaraz became the youngest man since Novak Djokovic to win a match at Roland Garros, where he ultimately reached the third round to settle at a career-high ranking of No. 78.