Mumbai: Nothing could lift Carlos Alcaraz under the lit-up Arthur Ashe Stadium. Not the crowd that rallied behind the player they’d paid to watch and backed to come through after almost every point he won. Not the opponent’s rare gifts of errors that the Spaniard invariably returned in greater volume. Not even Alcaraz’s prominent on-court smile, which turned up in bursts despite the contest slipping away from him.

The French Open and Wimbledon champion looked down right from the start of his Thursday night outing in New York. And soon enough he was out, from the second round of the US Open after a feeble 6-1, 7-5, 6-4 defeat to Dutchman Botic van de Zandschulp.

This would rank as one of the biggest upsets in recent Grand Slam memory, not only given world No. 3 Alcaraz’s consistent run across majors since his breakthrough but also Zandschulp’s recent struggles with injuries and form that almost made him stop playing the sport this year.

This is the 21-year-old Spaniard’s earliest defeat in a Slam since he crashed out of the second round at Wimbledon in 2021, the season in which he began competing at the big stage. The world No. 74 Dutchman is the lowest ranked player that Alcaraz has been ousted by in a Slam since the Spaniard’s Slam debut at the 2021 Australian Open. Alcaraz, on a 15-match win streak in Slams, had only been beaten by top 10 players over the last couple of years in them, and never before the quarter-final stage.

Zandschulp, a former top-25 pro, had not won two matches in a row on the ATP tour since May. He lost in the first round of the Australian Open, French Open and the second round of Wimbledon. Last year, he grappled with persistent foot issues — bone bruises, ankle twists, ligament tears, infections — that saw his rankings dive and force him to drop down to the Challenger level.

This second-round contest therefore was meant to be a mismatch. It was. Except the other way around.

Alcaraz was a pale shadow of his colourful self on court, both in his play and body language. When Alcaraz brought out his funky stuff — lobs, tweeners — in his first service game yet was broken in it to a bunch of errors (he ended with 27), you knew something wasn’t right. When Alcaraz served his first double fault of the match facing break point at 5-5 in the second set, you knew something wasn’t right. When Juan Carlos Ferrero sat grimly in the third set and watched a scratchy Alcaraz being pushed around by a largely solid Zandschulp, you knew something wasn’t right.

“It was a fight against myself, you know, in my mind during the match,” Alcaraz said.

That mind, without a doubt, appeared cooked. Perhaps more than the body.

Among all the players in New York, Alcaraz has had the busiest second half of 2024. This season’s two-time Slam champion went all the way at the French Open, then at Wimbledon, and then at the Paris Olympics where it was hard for him to see the silver lining of his final defeat to Novak Djokovic. That’s three taxing tournaments across three months. And turning up for the fourth after losing the first round in Cincinnati, Alcaraz didn’t ooze vigour, even in his first-round win where he dropped a set.

“I’ve been playing a lot of matches lately. With Roland Garros, Wimbledon, Olympics,” Alcaraz said. “I took a little break after the Olympics. I thought it was enough. Probably it wasn’t enough. I came here without as much energy as I thought I was going to come with. I don’t want to use that as an excuse. But, it (the schedule) is so tight. I’m a player who needs more days or more of a break coming into the big tournaments. I have to think about it and learn about it.”

Djokovic, in that 2021 season where he won the first three Slams and competed at the Tokyo Olympics, was as exhausted as anyone could be in giving the US Open and the Calendar Slam a crack. Even on a near-empty tank, Djokovic made it till the final. Alcaraz has, in the past, spoken about addressing his early career tendency to tail off a bit in the season’s second half. And this US Open crash comes as another reminder of that, although in a season few can boast of at 21 in the history of tennis.

Alcaraz also couldn’t find solutions on the court on the night, switch to a Plan B or to a level that could just about see him through to live to fight another day. The Spaniard has never won a match from two sets to love down. When it’s not his day, Alcaraz doesn’t quite “know how to manage that”. It wasn’t his day against Zandschulp, and he certainly couldn’t manage it.

“I couldn’t increase my level. I think my level stayed at the same point all the match, and it wasn’t enough to win the match or to give myself the chance of getting into the match or trying to give myself chances,” Alcaraz said. “So, you know, what can I say?”

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