French Open: Carlos Alcaraz wins his third Slam at age of 21; matches Murray, Wawrinka in career slams
Some time during the late 20th century, an administrator at a hunting club in the hill village of El Palmar, in the Murcia region of Spain, decided to install a tennis court at the site. Hard courts may have been cheaper, but the Spanish love the red stuff.His son would go on to have a short career before becoming a coach on the same courts, and by the time his grandson, the third generation in a lineage of tennis-mad men, began to show promise as a junior competitor skimping and sliding on clay, coaches and onlookers saw it as a sign of providence – that this was going to be the next big clay-courter to come out of a country that has famously provided so many.
On Sunday, Carlos Alcaraz would confirm their telling. In a tense, patchy, low-quality grind on a windy afternoon on Court Philipp...