Emergency Episode: Injured Carlos Alcaraz Out of Roland Garros & Rome
4/24/202633 min
Ben called in Tumaini (who found a quiet corridor in Madrid) to record an emergency episode on the news of Carlos Alcaraz missing Rome and Roland Garros next month due to a concerning wrist injury.
We usually wouldn't do an emergency episode about a withdrawal, but the competitive relevance of Alcaraz to men's tennis is hard to overstate--he's defending champion of both events--and so we dig into what it means for both for Alcaraz himself and his future, as well as the competitive landscape of the tour without him.
Also, we briefly discuss the abrupt and unforeseen exit of WTA CEO Portia Archer this week, after only about a year and a half in the job.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsTumaini Carayol0:00
Miss Ostapenko has no challenges remaining Welcome to No Challenges Remaining.
Ben Rothenberg· Host0:04
I'm Ben Rothenberg, doing a bit of an emergency episode here with Tumani Carayol, coming in live from Madrid, where he is NCR's Spain and Sub-Saharan Africa correspondent, uh, and also the tennis correspondent for The Guardian. But Tumani, we're here on your Spain beat for this episode. This is a Spain topic. You're in Madrid. A player who's not in Madrid for the tournament anyway, at least, is Carlos Alcaraz, the, uh, the winner of the last two men's singles majors, the guy who's won everything lately, the two-time defending champion at the French Open. And just today, he pulled out of the French Open and the Italian Open before it, uh, citing, uh, test results that he, were, had on his, his wrist, which it's been an issue for him ever since he pulled out of Barcelona. Um, I was going back through the footage and watching his first match. And he played one match in Barcelona, uh, against Otto Virtanen in the first round and won it 6-4, 6-2, and he had a medical timeout, uh, after nine games of the, the first set. There wasn't a very obvious acute moment where you can really see any moment of discomfort or pain, going back through the footage and watching pretty carefully. Um, but he hits a double fault. He call- asks for the trainer, plays several more games. Trainer... Sorry, plays several more points. Trainer comes out. Um, he, he winds up winning the next game and then winning the second set pretty comfortably, or comfortably at least on the scoreboard, if not in his wrist. Um, but didn't, yeah, didn't look like too major of a thing, but it's, he pulled out of his next match in, in Barcelona, then pulled out of Madrid with a little bit of advance