Carlos Alcaraz warned ‘Novak Djokovic will eat you up if you give him points for free’

It is the big clash at the French Open on Friday as Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic will square off for a place in the final so what are the dos and dont’s for each player?

Alcaraz and Djokovic have dominated the sport the past few months with the former winning the US Open and becoming the youngest world No 1 while the latter won Wimbledon last year and the Australian Open at the start of the year while he also had several stints at No 1 in the ATP Rankings.

However, due to injuries and travelling bans they have met only once in professional tennis with Alcaraz winning their 2022 Madrid Open semi-final in three sets.

Things will change on Friday as they will meet in the semi-final at Roland Garros and speaking on Eurosport, seven-time Grand Slam winner Mats Wilander highlighted way neither can afford to be slow out of the blocks.

“I don’t think Novak has any weaknesses, not now. Maybe was he a little bit flat the other day against Karen Kachanov [in the semi-final], maybe emotionally, physically, I’m not sure – he didn’t come out and play very well in the first set, but towards the end of the second set he turned it around,” he said.

“But it’s not enough to start like that against someone like Carlos Alcaraz. You don’t want to get a start against either of those two guys [Djokovic and Alcaraz]. Even though Alcaraz doesn’t have the experience in numbers I would say he’s an experienced tennis player, and he knows perfectly well what he needs to do to win tennis matches. There can’t be too many let downs from either player, otherwise they’ll be too far behind.’

“It’s really difficult to know what they’re both going to do. We know that Novak is going to be solid, he’s not going to make mistakes we know he’s going to be aggressive with his own forehand, but his backhand will need to be a little harder, because Alcaraz is so quick around the court he can run around and hit a forehand.”

So are there any shots in particular that Djokovic and Alcaraz need to avoid on Friday.

Wilander added: “I think Djokovic needs to stay away from Alcaraz’s forehand, and I think Alcaraz needs to stay away from cheap points, don’t make too many unforced errors, you are playing Novak Djokovic and he will eat you up if you give him points for free.

“Carlos Alcaraz has lit the professional tennis world on fire, people are talking about him more and more. Sitting watching him live is incredible. He comes from nowhere and smacks the forehand so hard that it’s nearly a lack of respect for the game itself.

“A lot of people are saying that Carlos is a mixture of Roger [Federer] and Rafa [Nadal], but why are they leaving out Novak, to me he’s got the emotion and passion from Rafa, the mindset and variety of Federer and then you can say he’s got these movement patterns too, he moves unbelievably well.

“I’m sure that he maybe not studies Novak, but when you grow up and have spent the last 15 years watching these Big Three, you learn so much without being told by anyone. You’re just watching on TV and you learn.”

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