10 amazing things Carlos Alcaraz achieved by winning his first Roland Garros title

Carlos Alcaraz was in warrior mode from start to finish at Roland Garros this year, not only working his way back into top form in the first few rounds after an arm injury had kept him out of most of the clay-court lead-up season, but then finishing the tournament off with back-to-back comebacks from two-sets-to-one down, against Jannik Sinner in the semifinals and Alexander Zverev in the final.

Here are 10 things Alcaraz achieved with his run to the title in Paris:

He’s the first man in the Open Era to win back-to-back five-setters in the semifinals and final of Roland Garros. He beat Sinner, 2-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, and then Zverev, 6-3, 2-6, 5-7, 6-1, 6-2, to become the first man to achieve the feat since Rod Laver in 1962, six years before the Open Era began—and 41 years before Alcaraz himself was born.

At 21, he’s the youngest man ever to win a Grand Slam title on hard, grass and clay. He was already the youngest man ever to even reach a Grand Slam final on all three surfaces. His first two majors came at the US Open in 2022 (on hard) and Wimbledon in 2023 (on grass).

He’s now 3-0 in his career in Grand Slam finals. He’s the seventh man in the Open Era to do that one after Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, Stefan Edberg, Gustavo Kuerten, Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka, and the second-youngest of the group after Borg, who was 20 when he did it.

And with a US Open, Wimbledon and Roland Garros title under his belt, he’s already three quarters of the way to a Career Slam. If he wins the Australian Open in the next three years, he’ll be the youngest man in the Open Era to do the Career Slam—Rafael Nadal currently holds that record, completing his at the 2010 US Open at 24 years, 4 months.

He’s now the fifth active men’s player with three or more Grand Slam titles. The other four are Novak Djokovic (24, the all-time men's record), Nadal (22), Andy Murray (3) and Wawrinka (3).

He’s the first man born in the 2000s to win Roland Garros. He’s actually the first man born since 1990 to do it. Four ‘90s-born men have come close—Dominic Thiem, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Casper Ruud and now Zverev—but they’ve all been stopped at the final hurdle.

He now has as many Grand Slam titles as every other man born since 1990 combined. 2020 US Open champion Thiem (born in 1993), 2021 US Open champion Daniil Medvedev (born in 1996) and 2024 Australian Open champion Sinner (born in 2001) are the other three.

With Roland Garros being the 14th tour-level title of his career, he breaks a tie with Sinner for most career tour-level titles for a man born in the 2000s. They were tied at 13 each going into Paris.

With his 2.4 million Euro paycheque for winning the title, he's now the 14th man in ATP history to surpass $30 million in career prize money. And he actually leapfrogged five players—Thiem, Andre Agassi, Marin Cilic, Tsitsipas and David Ferrer—to shoot to ninth place on the list.

Finally, he rose from No. 3 to No. 2 by winning the title. With Sinner at No. 1, this week is the first all-2000s-born Top 2 in ATP rankings history—coincidentally it's the first all-2000s born Top 2 in WTA rankings history this week, too, with Iga Swiatek at No. 1 and Coco Gauff at No. 2.