Carlos Alcaraz won the tournament in Madrid. © ANSA / Chema Moya

Alcaraz stops the high flyer in the final

Jan-Lennard Struff narrowly missed the culmination of his strong performances at the Masters tournament in the final in Madrid against Carlos Alcaraz.

07 May 2023

From: dpa

The 33-year-old from Warstein lost to the Spanish world number two on Sunday evening, despite another excellent performance, 4:6, 6:3, 3:6. This means that Struff still has to wait for the first ATP tournament victory of his career three weeks before the start of the French Open, but he has climbed higher in the world rankings than ever before.

Unlike Alexander Zverev in the 1:6, 2:6 round of 20, Struff didn't receive a lesson from Alcaraz, but was able to keep up for a long time. In the second set, he took his 2-year-old opponent's serve early and kept his nerve in front of the loud crowd at the Manolo Santana Stadium. However, Alcaraz won the decisive round with his extra class and scored the first match point after 25:XNUMX hours.

For the first time ever, Struff was in the final of a tournament in the second highest category - and even created another novelty: the Sauerlander had actually already failed in qualifying, but made it into the main draw due to the cancellation of another player. Reaching the final as a so-called lucky loser was something no other professional in the history of the Masters had ever achieved.