Carlos Alcaraz, Sebastian Korda and Jessica Pegula pick up the intensity before the Sunshine Double

We haven’t quite reached the heart of the tennis season. That starts with Indian Wells in early March and runs through the US Open in early September. Over those six months, trophies are handed out at three of the four Grand Slams, and seven of the nine Masters 1000s, on clay, grass, and hard courts.

If we aren’t at that level of intensity yet, we could start to feel it coming this past week. In Doha, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner returned for the first time since Australia. In Dubai, most of the top women were in action at the WTA’s second 1000 of the month. And in Delray, two American men made their first final of the season.

Here are three takeaways from the third week in February.

“There’s no hiding place, is there?”

That’s how commentator Nick Lester described the life of Arthur Fils on Sunday. The Frenchman was in the second set of his Doha final with Carlos Alcaraz, and, as Lester said, he had no place to run, no place to hide, and no place where he could safely put the ball. Fils would win just five points on Alcaraz’s serve in a 50-minute, 6-2, 6-1 defeat.

“I played great. I played amazing,” said Alcaraz, who placed it among the “Top 10, Top 15” performances of his career.

“I played really aggressively, and I didn’t do any mistakes at all. I was serving well, returning well.”

The same couldn’t be said for Fils, who started making errors early and never stopped. Serving down 0-2 in the second set, he watched helplessly as Alcaraz belted a backhand past him for a second break. There was only one thing left for Fils to do: Annihilate the racquet that had betrayed him, and leave it bent in half at the back of the court.

Last month, Alcaraz reached a new peak by completing the career Slam at the Australian Open, at just 22 years old. With this win—which made him 12-0 on the season—he showed no signs of rust, or a letdown, or a loss of focus, or any of the other traps that typically trip champions up and bring them back to earth.

In the final, he hit 19 winners and made just nine errors. He was five for five at the net, and 28 of 33 on serve. When Fils finally came up with something brilliant—a dipping backhand pass—Alcaraz reached out and answered it with a short-hop drop-volley winner. Alcaraz, as usual, smiled at his genius. All Fils could do was smile back.

“She’s basically the Bauhaus of tennis. No extra lines”

Leave it to Andrea Petkovic, former player and now Tennis Channel commentator, to compare a player to a modernist German architecture school of the early 20th century.

While it may have confused a few—or most—viewers, Petkovic’s description of Jessica Pegula’s game was apt. The American, like the Bauhaus, doesn’t believe in frills, or loops, or decorative flourishes. She takes the racquet back, brings it straight forward, and sends the ball on a flat line back toward her opponent.

But if that sounds like a backhanded compliment for a Top 5 player, Petkovic also rightly noted another element of Pegula’s game.

“She has maybe the best timing in the world.”

Read more: Jessica Pegula has an answer to Zheng Qinwen's 'hilarious' question on "Player's Box" podcast

Pegula’s timing was mostly exquisite in her five matches in Dubai. In the semifinals, she dropped the first set 6-1 before coming back to beat No. 2 seed Amanda Anisimova. And she bounced back with something even better in her 6-2, 6-4 win over Elina Svitolina in the final. The two women use similarly flat shots, but Pegula’s were stronger, heavier, deeper, and more precise. Svitolina had no answer for her down-the-line forehand in particular.

The title was the 10th of Pegula’s career, and left her just 35 points behind Coco Gauff at No. 4 in the world. She’s 13-2 on the year. Despite her success over the past six months, she said she and coach Mark Knowles wanted to return to basics in Doha.

“We kind of went back to emphasizing how I play tennis,”
Pegula said. “It’s not the same as maybe Aryna or an Iga or Coco or whoever. I like to take the ball early. I like to work on my timing.”

“We kind of went back to the basics of, ‘OK, this is how you play, it’s special. How do we make that more efficient?’ That’s a lot more efficient footwork, taking the ball earlier, being able to flow through my shots a little bit better.”

Pegula will turn 32 this week. For someone who was a late-bloomer, and who was derailed for years by injuries, that number is a little misleading. Right now she looks and sounds like someone who is just discovering how good she can be,

“I’m used to the wind, but this was extreme”

Sebastian Korda and Tommy Paul had an invisible common enemy in their Delray Beach final. It made the ball bend and knuckle. It held it up and slowed it down on one side of the court, and accelerated it through the other side. It forced both guys to lunge at the last second for their ground strokes.

“I was born and raised in Florida, so I’m used to the wind, but this was extreme for sure,” Korda said in his post-match interview.

Korda’s relative comfort with those unpredictable gusts made the difference in this match. He seemed to know when to try to drive the ball through the wind, and when to slice his backhand and let the breeze carry it where it may. His backspin chop, sent safely down the middle of the court, may have been his most effective play. Paul had to bend and stretch for it, and he made several key errors when he tried to do too much.

“We were both struggling out there,” Korda said after his 6-4, 6-3 win. “Just trying to keep the ball in the court.”

This was just Korda’s third career title, and it came in his second week with new coach Ryan Harrison. It also felt like a symbolic advance: Five years ago, at 20, he broke onto the pro scene by reaching the Delray final, before shooting up the rankings that spring and summer. At the time, the sky appeared to be the limit, but nothing has gone according to plan since. Injuries, a penchant for inopportune errors, and a 2-7 record in finals have helped keep him out of the Top 10.

“I’ve been through some stuff the last couple months, years,” Korda said. “I’ve lost a lot of finals. This is where I made my first ATP final, so it’s kind of like a full circle.”

U.S. tennis fans will hope that circle goes in a different, better direction for Korda this time around.