"I don't know if it was my greatest success, but I am sure it was the Grand Slam where I felt the most pressure. After that, I was completely at peace with myself, I no longer needed anything else in my career." Roger Federer spoke with that grandiloquence about an achievement that came to him when he was 27 years old, when he was already Roger Federer. In 2009, he had already turned tennis into art and art into glory at the Australian Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open, but at Roland Garros, he only found defeats. He had clashed three times in the final against the wall of Rafa Nadal, and there he could remain for centuries, trapped in historical frustration.
One of the childhood idols of the Swiss had been Pete Sampras, and he never managed to triumph in Paris. What if the same thing happened to him? Fortunately, in 2009, a surprising Robin Söderling eliminated Nadal in the round of 16 and, despite all the pressure accumulated over the years, opened the doors of heaven for him: the so-called Career Slam, the full set of all four Grand Slam tournaments, a barrier finally broken.
Federer's suffering serves to highlight what Carlos Alcaraz achieved this Sunday. After defeating Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open final, the Spaniard became, at 22 years and 274 days, the youngest tennis player to dominate the four majors. The previous record was held by his friend and compatriot Rafa Nadal, also present at the Rod Laver Arena, at 24 years and 101 days, evidence of the precocity of both and of a generation that rewrote the timelines. For Nadal, the Grand Slam that cost him the most was the US Open, when his transformation into a truly versatile player was still pending, but he also celebrated the full set in his early career.
Before the two of them, the Career Slam represented the culmination of an entire career, a climax, the definitive closure of a record. Only nine men have achieved it in all of history, and most did so around or after the age of thirty, when time was already weighing heavily. The list is as follows: Fred Perry, Don Budge, Roy Emerson, Rod Laver, André Agassi, Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and now, yes, Alcaraz.
"Would you sign to be a champion here and not win another Grand Slam throughout the season?" they asked him beforehand, and his answer was clear: "Yes, this year I would sign it." Alcaraz knows that his early full set defines him in the comparison among legends. Whatever happens from now on, whether he reaches the twenties of Grand Slam titles like Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer or not, it will remain that he was the one who adapted the fastest to all surfaces and contexts of modern play. For Djokovic, who was defeated yesterday, for example, it was a struggle. Like Federer, at Roland Garros, he stumbled time and time again against Nadal and even against Stan Wawrinka before achieving his title. When he did, he was already 29 years old, just like André Agassi, while the classics, like Laver, did it in their thirties with some luck.
The most decorated tennis player who never achieved the Career Slam is Sampras, but there is a long list of great champions with a gap in their records. Björn Borg never won the US Open; Jimmy Connors missed out on Roland Garros; Ivan Lendl couldn't triumph at Wimbledon; John McEnroe fell short in Australia and Roland Garros; Mats Wilander at Wimbledon; Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker, Guillermo Vilas, and Jim Courier also didn't complete the full set. Manolo Santana never made it to Melbourne, and Sinner still dreams of reigning in Paris, a pending task of the present.
"Obviously, it is a great achievement for me. It was the goal I had set for myself this season," Alcaraz accepted, also raising his Grand Slam count to seven. He now has the same number as McEnroe and Wilander, just one less than Connors, Lendl, and Agassi. Once again, the record is his, although he is already accustomed to it: he is the youngest to reach that number. When Nadal reached seven Grand Slam titles, he had just turned 24; Federer was approaching 25, and Djokovic had already celebrated his 27th birthday.
At 22 years old, Alcaraz has a whole career ahead of him, but he already has records, achievements, and accolades. There has never been such a precocious tennis player, and there has never been such a versatile player; only the future will tell if there has never been a better player as well.