Alcaraz is not going to the Open de Barcelona.
Carlos Alcaraz is almost done entering the number of tournaments he participated in in 2024. Alcaraz has participated in four tournaments, winning one at Indian Wells, but he has already missed three after pulling out of the Barcelona Open on Sunday. Furthermore, his present injury might not be a temporary one.
Alcaraz has an injury to his arm. The Spaniard, who is right-handed, injured his pronator teres muscle, and because of this, he is unable to fully flex the muscle, which prevents him from applying torque to his forehand. Obviously, this restricts his enormous authority. This would be an easy way for elite players to overwhelm Alcaraz.
Of course, continuing to try to play with the injury could also cause even more harm. The only way to truly treat what Alcaraz has is to rest. This means no tournaments and no practice. Alcaraz attempted to hit some balls this weekend, but the injury had no lessened so the Spaniard and his team made the decision to not play in Barcelona.
Carlos Alcaraz withdraws from the Barcelona Open due to a forearm injury.
The positive would be that at least Alcaraz feels as if he is close to playing, but he is simply not in good enough shape to risk participating in matches. Because his forearm needs to be rested, there is no timetable on when the Spaniard will return to playing. There are still a few events left before the French Open begins in late May, so Alcaraz could test his arm in one of those.
Expecting to enter the French Open without having played much recent tennis and doing well would be a mistake. The No. 3 ranked ATP player is clearly talented enough to defeat most players even if he is only 70 percent of his normal self, but entering the event with little hope of winning seems illogical.
Missing the Barcelona Open is also going to hurt Alcaraz’s ranking points. He won the ATP 500 event in 2023 so those points will drop off for him. He is scheduled to play in the Madrid Masters next week, but if he misses that event as well he will drop another 1,000 points as Alcaraz won in Madrid in 2023 as well.
Let’s just hope that Alcaraz can recover quickly and not lose much of his form. He needs his power to win at a high level. And as Carlos Alcaraz is a very popular player, his winning is also good for tennis.
