US Open: Carloss Alcaraz’s 15-match Grand Slam win streak ends in loss to van de Zandschulp

NEW YORK: After double-faulting to fall behind two sets to none a deficit he’s never overcome in the second round of the US Open, Carlos Alcaraz slung his equipment bag over a shoulder and trudged towards the locker room.

Glancing in the direction of his coach, 2003 French Open champion Juan Carlos Ferrero, Alcaraz pointed his right index finger at his temple, then wagged that finger, as if to say, “I’m not thinking straight.”

He might have been excused for being confused by what was transpiring under the closed retractable roof at Arthur Ashe Stadium on a chilly evening, and one set later, Alcaraz’s 15-match Grand Slam unbeaten streak was over with a sloppy 6-1, 7-5, 6-4 loss to 74th-ranked Botic van de Zandschulp.

“It was a fight against myself, in my mind, during the match. In tennis, you are playing against someone that wants the same as you — to win the match and you have to be as ... calm as you can, just to think better in the match and try to do good things,” Alcaraz said. “Today I was playing against the opponent, and I was playing against myself, in my mind. A lot of emotions that I couldn't control.”

The result eliminated the pre-tournament men’s favorite and certainly was hard to predict beforehand, given the No. 3-seeded Alcaraz’s standing in the game, his excellence of late and his opponent’s far-lesser resume.

It followed another exit in Ashe for a past US Open champion, Naomi Osaka, who was sent home Thursday by Karolina Muchova 6-3, 7-6 (5). That one, though, was not nearly as out-of-nowhere as what happened to Alcaraz.

He won the French Open in June and Wimbledon in July to raise his career total to four major championships, including taking the title at Flushing Meadows in 2022. Then, in early August, Alcaraz won a silver medal at the Paris Olympics, losing to Novak Djokovic in the final.

Maybe, Alcaraz acknowledged, a tennis schedule he called “so tight” drained him too much.

“Probably, I came here with not as much energy as I thought that I was going to (have),” he said. “But, I mean, I don’t want to put that as excuse.”

What’s clear is he never found his footing against van de Zandschulp, a 28-year-old from the Netherlands. Alcaraz was way off, repeatedly missing the sorts of shots he usually makes routinely.

The 21-year-old from Spain came in with a 16-2 record at the US Open, where he never lost before the quarterfinals in three previous appearances. This also was Alcaraz’s earliest defeat at any major tournament since bowing out in the second round of Wimbledon in 2021 as a teenager; he’s never been beaten in the first round at a Slam event.

In contrast, van de Zandschulp only once has been to a Grand Slam quarterfinal, getting that far at the US Open in 2021.