{"id":75911,"date":"2022-05-06T00:28:12","date_gmt":"2022-05-05T23:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/?p=68266"},"modified":"2022-05-06T00:28:12","modified_gmt":"2022-05-05T23:28:12","slug":"alcaraz-gifts-himself-quarter-final-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/alcaraz-gifts-himself-quarter-final-madrid\/","title":{"rendered":"Alcaraz gifts himself a quarter-final in Madrid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Manolo Santana Stadium sang Happy Birthday to <strong>Carlos Alcaraz<\/strong> and he responded with a solid win over <strong>Cameron Norrie<\/strong>. The Spaniard turned 19 on Thursday and he celebrated by reaching his first Mutua Madrid Open quarter-final. Now he will face <strong>Rafael Nadal<\/strong> on the same stage where the two clashed one year ago, when he reached adulthood.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The No. 9 in the ATP Ranking beat the Briton in three sets <strong>(6-4, 6-7[4], 6-3)<\/strong> after two hours and 39 minutes of play to beat his best in the Caja M\u00e1gica, where he will now play against his compatriot and third seed, not before four O&#8217;clock in the afternoon, at the twentieth anniversary of the #MMOPEN.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Alcaraz dominated early with a break in the fourth game (3-1), which Norrie recovered in the ninth (5-4). The Briton was unable to consolidate though and <strong>the seventh seed notched up a first set that lasted 56 minutes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Johannesburg-born player <strong>managed to take the clash to a decider after another long set<\/strong> (62 minutes). The man from Murcia found himself a break down (2-3), but Norrie again failed to consolidate on his own serve (3-3). The rest of the set went with serve and the Briton tipped the balance in his favour in the tiebreak.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>One break in the first game and another in the ninth was enough for Alcaraz<\/strong> to claim the decider and a place among the last eight in the Caja M\u00e1gica. His only stumbling block came in the sixth game, when he had to fend off two break-back points.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"es\">\u2694\ufe0f &#8220;Va a ser un partido totalmente diferente&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>? Tal d\u00eda como hoy, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RafaelNadal?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@RafaelNadal<\/a> y <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/alcarazcarlos03?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@alcarazcarlos03<\/a> jugaron por primera vez en el <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/MMOPEN?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#MMOPEN<\/a><\/p>\n<p>? Un a\u00f1o m\u00e1s tarde volver\u00e1n a verse las caras en cuartos de final. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/43If0TQYfi\">pic.twitter.com\/43If0TQYfi<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 #MMOPEN (@MutuaMadridOpen) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MutuaMadridOpen\/status\/1522322389870292992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">May 5, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong>Birthday surprise<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As soon as the match was over, the Manolo Santana Stadium congratulated Alcaraz again with a cake for his nineteenth birthday. &#8220;Thank you so much, everyone, for the surprise. <strong>I feel so fortunate to have experiences like this.<\/strong> Last year I left with a defeat and this time I am winning and listening to Happy Birthday&#8221;, he said to the fans.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Regarding the match, the player from El Palmar mentioned how tough it is playing Norrie. &#8220;Everyone knows him now. He is awkward to play against. <strong>He has a flat backhand, and with his forehand he changes height and fights till the final point.<\/strong> To beat him you have to hit three or four very good shots and be more aggressive than he is&#8221;, he explained.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the quarters, Alcaraz and Nadal will face each other for the third time. So far the Mallorcan dominates their head-to-head with his wins at last year&#8217;s #MMOPEN (6-1, 6-2) and this season in the semi-finals of the Masters 1000 in Indian Wells (6-4, 4-6, 6-3). \u201cI&#8217;m going to enjoy tomorrow&#8217;s match to the max. <strong>I&#8217;ve lost twice, but I hope it will be third time lucky.<\/strong> I&#8217;ll fight until the end&#8221;, he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Manolo Santana Stadium sang Happy Birthday to Carlos Alcaraz and he responded with a solid win over Cameron Norrie. The Spaniard turned 19 on Thursday and he celebrated by reaching his first Mutua Madrid Open quarter-final. Now he will face Rafael Nadal on the same stage where the two clashed one year ago, when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":75912,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[180,18,179],"tags":[41,66,17,686],"class_list":["post-75911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mens-tennis","category-mutua-news","category-tennis","tag-atp-en","tag-carlos-alcaraz-en","tag-mutua-madrid-open-en","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}