A father who couldn't afford a tennis career raised Carlos Alcaraz, Grand Slam record-breaker
Carlos Alcaraz's father once hoped to turn professional but quit as a teenager because the family could not pay for it. He became a coach at a club in Murcia, where his son picked up a racket at four. By 22, that son had won all four majors, younger than any man before him.
His mother worked as a sales assistant at IKEA, and the club where his father coached and ran things became his playground. Sponsors arrived absurdly early: at 10 he signed with the racket maker Babolat and played his first event abroad, an under-10 world championship in Croatia, losing in the final. An IMG agent, Albert Molina, spotted him at 11 and spent time persuading the family to sign. Junior titles followed across Spain and Europe, and he helped Spain win the Junior Davis Cup in 2018 after saving a match point in singles.
His professional debut came at 14, in a minor event in his home city in February 2018, where he knocked out the second seed and earned his first two ranking points, entering the list at 1414th. At 15 he beat a 17-year-old Jannik Sinner, who had won 16 straight matches, the first Challenger victory by anyone born in 2003. At 16 he won a three-hour-37-minute match on his tour debut in Rio. A year later at the US Open he stunned the third-ranked Stefanos Tsitsipas in a final-set tiebreak.
Then came the landslide. He won the 2022 US Open and, at 19 years and 130 days, became the youngest world No. 1 of the Open Era and the youngest to end a year on top. He beat seven-time champion Novak Djokovic in the 2023 Wimbledon final, won Roland Garros and Wimbledon back to back in 2024, and in 2025 took the French and US Opens, beating Sinner in a historic Paris final.
The 2026 Australian Open completed the set at 22 years and 272 days. He has spent 66 weeks at No. 1, still travels with his father and brother Álvaro, his hitting partner, and spends the off-season at his parents' home in Murcia.
Source: Carlos Alcaraz
