Is Carlos Alcaraz the one we’ve been waiting for? He and the Miami crowd gave the sport a jolt to remember

Tennis Channel Live: With win over Tsitsipas, Alcaraz into the Miami quarterfinals

If you, like me, clicked over to the Carlos Alcaraz-Stefanos Tsitsipas match in the middle of the first set on Tuesday night, you probably had your eyes widened and your eyebrows raised by the noise coming out of your TV set. There was a different type of sound inside the Grandstand in Miami. We might be used to hearing it at football games or soccer matches or music festivals, but we aren’t used to hearing it in tennis. There was, to fall back on a cliché, electricity in it.

The 5,000-seat stadium was the place to be yesterday. That’s where Nick Kyrgios unraveled against Jannik Sinner, and Francisco Cerundolo belted some of the biggest forehands of the year against Frances Tiafoe. But those turned out to be warm-up acts for the main event between the Spaniard and the Greek.

Both players had their loyalists. But the South Florida fans are partial to Latin players, and two of the most famous, Rafael Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro, haven’t played the tournament in a while. This crowd had likely watched Alcaraz beat Tsitsipas in a classic at the US Open, which made the rematch a must-see. When Nadal first played this tournament, in the mid-2000s, he also played in its second- and third-largest courts, and those were also filled. I remember the intensity of those audiences, but they weren’t as loud as the one last night for Alcaraz. Maybe that’s because Nadal was playing in Key Biscayne, a resort island, while Alcaraz and Tsitsipas were playing in Miami proper, a few feet from an NFL stadium. This was the first moment when that move, which came in 2019, has seemed worth it.

No one else among the Next Gen has built a massive fanbase, the way Federer had by the time Nadal arrived on the scene in the mid-2000s.

Tsitsipas, having lost to Alcaraz at the Open, took the initiative early and built a 4-2 lead. But between the 18-year-old Spaniard and the 5,000 or so people roaring for him, there was just too much energy coming from his side of the net for Tsitsipas to control. Once Alcaraz began to jump on returns and take control of rallies, it was the tennis equivalent of a tidal wave.

“It was pretty amazing,” Alcaraz said afterward. “Made a lot of energy to come back in the first set.”

“It was amazing playing in front of amazing crowd.”

Alcaraz’s shot-making was suitably amazing as well. We know he can fire forehands and backhands for winners from everywhere. We know he can catch up to balls that seem to be far out of his reach. But last night he also showed off a laser-guided running backhand lob. He put two of them on the baseline; all Tsitsipas could do was watch them go for winners. Alcaraz ended the match with a flourish, too: instead of drilling a mid-court backhand, he carved under it and floated a drop shot that Tsitsipas had no chance to get. The crowd celebrated like he had just won the World Cup.

Alcaraz has played Tsitsipas twice in the U.S., and twice the Spaniard has been jolted by the crowd support. Last night, while his match was going on, American Taylor Fritz was playing in front of a much quieter audience inside Hard Rock Stadium. Tennis fans in the States root for Americans, obviously, but just about any player, from any country, can find noisy support in cities like New York and Miami.

That goes double for an explosive athlete like Alcaraz, who can generate and feed off the electricity we heard on Tuesday. Is he the one we’ve have been waiting for? Alcaraz isn’t controversial like Kyrgios; he doesn’t seem like he’ll polarize fans; and no one else among the Next Gen has built a massive fanbase, the way Federer had by the time Nadal arrived on the scene in the mid-2000s. Alcaraz's exuberance would seem to make for an ideal foil for Daniil Medvedev’s cerebral style.

Whatever happens in the future, last night was a jolt to remember.