5 Carlos Alcaraz Quotes After Indian Wells Loss

On Saturday night, the 11th-seeded Daniil Medvedev upset top-ranked Carlos Alcaraz in the semifinal of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells: 6-3, 7-6(3). It was Alcaraz's first loss of the season and the latest sign of a Medvedev resurgence.

While losses are inevitable in the marathon ATP season, it does not make the outcome any less surprising for fans banking on another showdown between Alcaraz and world No. 2 Jannik Sinner. As always, Alcaraz was an open book during his post-match press conference.

"He deserves to win today"

Alcaraz started his media availability by praising Medvedev, "Well, first of all, I'm going to have to give credit to Daniel. I think he just played an amazing match. Since the start of the match until the end of match he was playing unreal, I got to say. So I've never seen, to be honest, playing Daniil like this. So he deserves completely the win today.

He deserves completely to get through and play a final here. So all I can say is just congratulations to him, and for my side is I played few games, mostly in the first set, that I let go my serve game. Part of that I just start running all the time against him. So it was tough for me, but you know, just proud to see that I just fought on to the last ball."

"It was because of the heat."

A reporter asked Alcaraz whether the heat made him look unwell on the court. He admitted, "Well, it was because of the heat. The first set, I wasn't bad at all. Still, I just felt like the long rallies, especially when you play against Daniil, that the rallies are long, that you have to increase all the power in almost every shot, so it feels like you're wasting extra energy after every shot, and with the heat. Sometimes it's really tricky to deal with all of that."

Alcaraz continued, "So the first set was a little bit of a struggle for me. But it is because he just made it, he just made it, that I had to struggle a little bit. In the second set, I just started to feel much, much better. I realized what I had to do. I realized that I had to suffer, and I accept it. So I just uh I would say that that's why the second set was better."

"That surprised me a bit."

When asked what went differently in the match compared to his previous successes against Medvedev, Alcaraz explained, "I think that surprised me a little bit. I knew at the beginning that he was going to play aggressive.

But the way he did it surprised me a lot because he didn't miss any or he didn't miss as much as I expected. So, he was playing aggressive and he didn't even miss. So it was tricky, and the condition was totally different because the ball was bouncing super, super high. It feels like after my serve, he just start in a good position to return well all the time."

"He was finding every solution."

When asked about what changed during his second set comeback, Alcaraz explained, "I realized that I had to do something different from the first set. I think, as I said, just try a few times something different in the first set, and he was finding every solution, every answer to my shots.

Alcaraz later added, "I try to play aggressively from the return and after that , trying to play long rallies the first two or three shots, trying to play with high bounce, and after that , trying to find the good space to go aggressive and go for it.

I just went to the net few more times that it was successful. Not always, but most of them. I had my chances that I didn't take it. I would say the difference was he just saved four break points, and I didn't save any. So I would say that's a big difference."

Night Session Didn't Matter

A reporter pointed out that Alcaraz had played mostly daily matches at Indian Wells and asked if the later match time made a difference. Alcaraz dismissed the notion, "Well, no, not at all. We have to get used to every condition - it doesn't matter."

Alcaraz added, "I knew that it was going to be totally different than the previous matches when we were playing night session. As I said before, I think this tournament is the tournament that you feel the most difference between playing day season or night session. But we've been practicing during the day every day.

So we knew the conditions about playing day session. I knew that before the match, and so it wasn't any factor at all, but obviously it is a big difference playing a day or night session here."