Carlos Alcaraz speaks with CNN after US Open win
He is a six-foot-one Spaniard who was born in the United States of America. But the story of Carlos Alcaraz’s win at the US Open was the story of his upbringing in Argentina, where he grew up in Buenos Aires.
In 2008, Alcaraz won his first tournament as a professional tennis player, at the Orange Open in Orange, Texas. Three months later, he won the US Open as a junior prodigy. His mother told him to win a Challenger and he would have a chance to make it as a pro after his career.
He was 13 years old when he won the US Open.
“My parents were born in Buenos Aires. We lived in a shantytown in Buenos Aires,” Alcaraz told CNN. “We moved to Texas when I was 8. My father was a mechanic and my mother taught me tennis when I was very young.”
An early coach for Alcaraz remembers him at age five.
“I remember him when his first practice was to take a tennis ball and knock five puddles off the net,” said the coach, Alejandro Fernandez, now director of the Futures tournaments in Argentina. “He hit it and made it come back. Very fast but very accurate.”
Alcaraz has been playing tennis since age five and a half, and started winning tournaments by the time he was 10 years old.
“At that time, Argentina was a very poor country with a dictatorship,” Fernandez said. “In one year, he won three titles.
“After he won his first title, he was a prodigy and people said: This kid has a good future.”
He started to play in the Futures Cup, a Challenger circuit, in Argentina and won seven of his first eight tournaments.
“Carlos was very, very nice,” Fernandez said. “He spent his childhood and adolescence winning