Poetry in motion: Carlos Alcaraz’s movement is the key to his grass success

On linen days like these, the suffocating deadness of the English summer heat makes simply existing a chore.

Carlos Alcaraz earned at least an extra £101,000 for reaching the Queen’s men’s singles final. He shouldn’t have done it for a penny less.

The quaintest colosseum ever built, on semi-final Saturday, the Andy Murray Arena contained the highest concentration of beige hats in the northern hemisphere: panamas, fedoras, boaters and cloches, flat caps and snapbacks. Floral hand fans fluttered at such a rate the butterflies must have thought we were declaring war.

This was Alcaraz’s 31st match on grass, in 31C, and he has now won 28 of them – 90.3 per cent – the best start to a grass-court career in the Open era and the highest win percentage on the surface ever. Jannik Sinner’s is 69 per cent (22-10), still better than Roger Federer or Pete Sampras at the same age and yet stratospheres from Alcaraz.

The sample size might be tiny, but geniuses of Alcaraz’s ilk tend to improve with age. Jack Draper is the only person to beat the Spaniard on grass since 2022, in the last 16 at Queen’s last year.

What if he only gets better from here? Are these the formative days of the grass Messiah?

It seems more likely than the alternative. In his 6-4, 6-4 semi-final victory over 37-year-old Roberto Bautista Agut, his first winner was an unplayable forehand down the line.

He then won the first set with a cushioned backhand slice which crawled over the net and died, masterful extremes of his strength and control. The boy king was exceptional throughout, his finest performance of the week.

He did all this having played the longest Queen’s match since 1991 – three hours and 26 minutes – to beat Jaume Munar on Thursday in 30C, before dispatching Arthur Rinderknech less than 24 hours later.

Across the week, his assimilation back on to grass has been rapid and brutal. His service game was poor against Munar, including double-faulting on match point in the second set, but by the time he faced Rinderknech, there were no such glimmers of weakness.

He was filmed mechanically firing serves at a coach cowering behind the practice net between matches. His first serve of the quarter-final was a 125mph ace. In the first set of the semi-final alone, he hit nine more. He learns and corrects at supercomputer pace.

Recently 22, he has no business being this good on grass. Like Rafael Nadal, he grew up on clay. Given how much of the season is dominated by hard courts, he and his father sought them out. But most players play only twice a year on grass.

Before 2023, his only senior experience was the two previous Wimbledons, where he didn’t make it past the round of 16. And yet in 2023 he won Queen’s, before beating Novak Djokovic in five sets to win his first Wimbledon. His backhand slice – a key shot on grass given the propensity for a lower, sliding bounce – has rapidly developed into a massive asset, sharing the artisan deftness of his drop shots. But really, it is all about his feet. We simply have to talk about Carlos Alcaraz’s feet.

“You have to be more focused on the footwork here,” Alcaraz said at Queen’s two years ago.

“Moving on grass is the key to everything on grass. I can’t slide as I do on clay or on a hard court.”

If I think about my foot placement while sprinting, I move like a giraffe in kitten heels. Alcaraz does it with such virtuoso dexterity you imagine he could play entire sonatas with his feet alone. He shortens and quickens his footwork on grass to secure his foundations for both ballistic winners and floating flicks, paced to perfection.

Nothing reveals just how present and aware he is on court more explicitly than the speed and ease with which he alters his movement to make the transition from clay.

The best shot of his quarter-final was a snorting forehand down the line, entirely the product of an exquisitely-timed and paced scurry across the baseline.

To hit the same shot on clay, he would have extended his stride and slid into it, as he did repeatedly to win the French Open less than three weeks ago.

Footwork is why he is statistically the best first-serve returner on grass ever, nearly two percent above Djokovic. And so, after today’s match against surprise finalist Jiri Lehecka, he goes to Wimbledon, where Alcaraz is favourite to become the fifth man in the Open era to win three consecutive men’s singles titles, after Djokovic, Federer, Sampras and Bjorn Borg.

Of course, Borg and Sampras never won grand slams on all three surfaces, as Alcaraz managed in 2024, while Federer and Djokovic were 28 and 24 respectively before they did.

His marvellous feet have danced him into an uncharted future. Where can they go from here?

Photograph by Julian Finney/Getty Images