Carlos Alcaraz defeated Alexander Zverev in five fitful, fretful sets on Sunday to win the French Open for the first time, conquering the Parisian clay just as he conquered the manicured lawns of Wimbledon last summer and the concrete jungle of Flushing Meadows in 2022. 

The 21-year-old becomes the youngest man to win grand slam titles on all three surfaces, overtaking his compatriot Rafael Nadal, who was a year older than Alcaraz when he completed his own set of multi-surface slams at the 2009 Australian Open.

Yet it was joining the pantheon of great Spanish champions in Paris that afforded Alcaraz the greatest satisfaction. Heading that elite coterie, of course, is Nadal, the record 14-time champion, but the Spanish tradition also includes Alcaraz’s coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, as well as Carlos Moyà and Albert Costa, to name only the most recent winners. Following his semi-final win over Jannik Sinner, Alcaraz namechecked them all, recalling how he used to run home from school to watch Roland Garros on TV as a child. Now he too is part of Spanish tennis folklore.

“Winning your first in every grand slam is always super special,” said Alcaraz after his 6-3, 2-6, 5-7, 6-1, 6-2 victory. “But in Roland Garros, knowing all the Spanish players who have won this tournament and being able to put my name on that massive list is something unbelievable. I dreamed about being in this position since I started playing tennis, since I was five, six years old, so it’s a great feeling.”

With Alcaraz, “feeling” is always a loaded term, and the rhythms of this final were largely dictated by the Murcian’s ability – and, for long stretches, his inability – to express his virtuosity; to find good feel on his shots, and good feelings in his mind. 

The occasion weighed heavily on both men initially, the prevailing mood made manifest by an error-strewn exchange of breaks and a frustrated early gesture from Alcaraz, who appeared troubled by the lofty trajectory of the 6ft 6in Zverev’s serve. Tricky at the best of times, the German’s thunderous delivery was made even more so by a swirling wind that, for much of the afternoon, had the flagpoles above Court Philippe Chatrier rattling on overtime. On more than one occasion, both players shanked balls into the crowd. 

Yet even in that challenging opening phase, Alcaraz showed flashes of magic, feathering drop shots and angling away volleys, and in the fifth game he secured another breakthrough, one that owed more to his own range and intelligence than any anxiety on Zverev’s part. Slowing the tempo with one-handed slices, using looped, spinny groundstrokes to disturb the German’s timing, and ripping forehands when they were least expected, Alcaraz utilised changes of pace and height to claim a love break. It was a passage that established a useful tactical template for the third seed. 

For now, though, there was no further need for such measures; suddenly Alcaraz was on a tear. He claimed a third break with an acutely angled forehand winner to seal the set, which Zverev ended with a success rate of just 48% behind his first serve and 38% on the second. They were desperate numbers for the German, and when Alcaraz survived a testing opening service game at the start of the second set, fending off three break points after leading 40-0, you half wondered if Zverev had missed an opportunity that would not come again. For all his difficulties, the 27-year-old had actually been striking the ball sweetly up to that point. Yet becoming embroiled in a shot-making contest with Alcaraz is rarely a recipe for success. Zverev’s growing frustration was evident in the beseeching looks he cast up towards his support team.

But then came a sea change. 

With Alcaraz serving at 2-2, a sequence of errors culminated with a mighty mishit from the Spaniard and a break for Zverev. Two games later, a double fault cost him another. Now it was Zverev racing through the gears – incisive at the net, discovering fresh potency off the ground, his serve wide to the deuce court, struck with lethal accuracy throughout, all but unplayable. He would finish the set with just four unforced errors. 

With the match level and Alcaraz labouring to stay on serve in the early stages of the third, it seemed possible it might be Zverev’s day after all. It invariably has been of late. He arrived in his second grand slam final unbeaten in a month and riding a 12-match winning streak that began in Rome, where he won his first Masters title in almost three years. In Paris, he had met every challenge head on, defeating Nadal in the opening round, surviving back-to-back five-setters against Tallon Griekspoor and Holger Rune, and denying an (admittedly ailing) Casper Ruud a third consecutive title shot. At 19 hours and 27 minutes, Zverev’s path to the final was the longest since records began in 1991.

Nor was that all. 

On Friday morning at the Tiergarten district court in Berlin, Zverev reached an out-of-court settlement with his former girlfriend Brenda Patea, the mother of his child, over domestic abuse allegations that he has consistently and unequivocally denied. Under the terms of the settlement, he was obliged to pay €200,000 (£170,000), with €50,000 going to the state and the remainder to non-profit organisations. 

Crucially, the case was discontinued rather than determined, with no decision made about guilt or innocence. By Friday evening, however, Zverev was declaring that it was time to move on. He certainly appeared to have done. “I never, ever want to hear another question about the subject again,” he told the press corps. On and off the court, Zverev clearly felt he had his ducks in a row, whatever the wider public view.

Alcaraz, meanwhile, appeared to have no such clarity. His third-set performance flattered only to deceive. Having lost 14 straight points against serve, he unexpectedly broke to love and went on to establish a 5-2 lead, his game flowing freely once more. But then he stalled as abruptly as he had surged, losing five games in a row to fall two sets to one down. By the end of the third set, the Spaniard was in uncharacteristically testy mood, complaining vociferously about the state of the court. 

“Do you think that’s normal?” Alcaraz demanded of the chair umpire, Renaud Lichtenstein. “Playing in the final of a grand slam? On a clay court, and it seems like a hard court? It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable.”

Novak Djokovic voiced similar complaints in his last-16 win over Francisco Cerúndolo, where he fell and suffered a knee injury that required surgery, and from courtside a patch of limestone was clearly visible through the clay. Even so, such outbursts are vanishingly rare where Alcaraz is concerned. His disgruntlement offered a reflection of his inability to summon his muse more consistently. 

As his achievements suggest, however, the Spaniard is more than just a gifted shot-maker. Alcaraz understands his game, and he believes in its virtues. He arrived in Paris lightly cooked after struggling with a forearm injury that allowed him to play just one warm-up tournament on clay, and once again sported the protective sleeve on his arm that he has worn throughout the fortnight. Yet he always had confidence that his game would be there when he needed it. So it was. He would drop just three more games. 

“I consider myself a player who doesn’t need too many matches to get [up to] 100%,” said Alcaraz. “I had a really good week here in Paris, practising with good players. I felt really well, playing sets, moving, hitting my shots before the tournament began. Obviously, every match that I’ve played, I was getting better and better.

“I believed in myself in every round of every day, and to the last ball of today’s match.”

That perseverance was clear when Alcaraz took a medical timeout at 4-1 in the fourth set to receive treatment on his left leg. Briefly, the mind wandered back to last year’s semi-final against Novak Djokovic, when his challenge was fatally undermined by cramp. But Alcaraz is a different player now, firmer of both mind and body. He rose from his chair to break, and minutes later served out the set to force a decider.

There was to be one more twist. Having suffered an early break in the fifth set, Zverev was dismayed by an overrule from the umpire after Alcaraz, facing the second of four break points, had a second serve called out. A Hawk-Eye graphic shown on TV suggested the German may have had a point, but the technology is not currently used on clay. 

 “I heard that at 2-1 the second serve was out from the Hawk-Eye data,” said Zverev, who had won 10 of his previous 11 deciding sets at Roland Garros. “If I break back there, I have break chances in the next service game, a fifth set can go the other way. But it is what it is. He played fantastic, he played better than me in the fourth and fifth sets.”

That much was undeniable. As destiny beckoned, Alcaraz showed absolute conviction. It was a matter of instinct; of feel and of feelings; of qualities that are hard to coach. 

“Sometimes I do whatever [my team] tell me, and sometimes it depends on my feelings in the moment,” said Alcaraz, who has lost just once in 13 matches after being taken to a fifth set. “But I’m trying in that moment just to be aggressive, just to go for it, playing my style, go to the net, hitting drop shots, hitting big shots. Because if I lose it, if I miss it, my feelings are really good. 

“It doesn’t matter if I lose, it doesn’t matter if I miss it, because when I go for it, the feelings are much better than if I go defensive and lose it anyway.”

On Sunday night, Alcaraz’s feelings were the best. 

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Inevitably, the Spaniard did not disappoint his public. A game away from victory when the revelry broke out in earnest, he was soon rifling one last backhand winner past Casper Ruud, the Norwegian eighth seed, to complete a 6-3, 6-3, 6-0 victory that sealed his 14th French Open title. Fourteen. The previous record of eight titles, set by the Frenchman Max Decugis in the early years of the 20th century, had stood for 100 years before Nadal broke it in 2014. The benchmark he has established since could endure for eternity. 

To put the achievement in context, Nadal has now won as many majors at Roland Garros alone as Pete Sampras won in his entire career. How unlikely that seemed when Sampras won the US Open in 2002, pulling two clear of Roy Emerson at the top of the grand slam leaderboard before quietly drifting into retirement. 

Many thought Nadal might go the same way after Sunday’s final. He now stands in a near-identical position to the great American, his 22nd slam leaving him two ahead of Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer. The allure of whiling away time in his yacht off the Mallorcan coast with family and friends must be increasing by the day. 

The deformed navicular bone in his foot that has troubled him since his teens, and which threatened to end his career last season when the pain finally became too much, forcing him off the tour for months, has hung over him like a cloud at Roland Garros, constantly threatening to rain on his Parisian parade. The most recent flareup saw him limp to defeat against Denis Shapovalov in Rome on the eve of the tournament, and at one point there were genuine doubts over whether he would turn up. But even at 36, and after all he has achieved in the game, his love of the sport and addiction to the adrenaline rush of competition are undiminished. He assured the crowd afterwards that he would “keep fighting to try to keep going”.  

By the time Nadal reached the final, having battled past Felix Auger-Aliassime in five gruelling sets, ridden countless momentum shifts to avenge last year’s semi-final defeat to Novak Djokovic, and weathered a seemingly irresistible surge from Alexander Zverev before the German suffered a horrific ankle injury, concerns about the state of his health were beginning to feel misplaced. Not for the Spaniard, however. Having refused to talk about the issue during the tournament, he revealed afterwards that an “amazing and very emotional two weeks” had only been made possible by multiple anaesthetic injections to numb the pain in his foot. 

“I was able to play during these two weeks with extreme conditions,” said Nadal. “I have been playing with injections on the nerves to sleep the foot, and that’s why I was able to play during these two weeks, because I have no feelings in my foot, because my doctor was able to put anaesthetic injections on the nerves. That takes out the feeling on my foot. But at the same time, it’s a big risk in terms of less feelings, a little bit bigger risk of turning your ankle or producing other [problems] there.  

“Of course, Roland Garros is Roland Garros. Everybody know how much this tournament means to me, so I wanted to keep trying and to give myself a chance here.  That was the only way to give myself a chance, no? So I did it. And I can’t be happier, and I can’t thank my doctor enough for all the things he did during all my tennis career, helping me in every tough moment. But it’s obvious that I can’t keep competing with the foot asleep.”

Nadal said he would undergo radiofrequency ablation, a pain-management method that uses heat to deaden nerve tissue, in an effort to carry on. Failing that, he said, surgery may be required, although there would be no guarantee of success. He is only a month into his return from the fractured rib he suffered in Indian Wells, and sometimes you wonder why he continues to put himself through all the pain and the comebacks.

“What drives me to keep going is not about the competition to try to be the best or to win more grand slams than the others,” sad Nadal. “What drives me to keep going is the passion for the game, to live moments that stay inside me forever, and play in front of the best crowds in the world and the best stadiums. That’s what drives me, no? The passion for what I do.”

Ruud, who has trained at Nadal’s academy for the past four years, gave everything in his first grand slam final. The problem for the Norwegian was that, for all his undoubted class, he remains something of a Rafa lite. A fine clay-courter with a big forehand and solid defensive skills, Ruud underscored his quality last summer with a run of three consecutive titles on the red dirt, winning in Bastad, Gstaad and Kitzbühel. Yet the 23-year-old is not equipped with the weaponry to trouble Nadal on his favourite surface. His service lacks weight and his levels of spin, power and athleticism pale in comparison to those of the Spaniard. As a result, he was increasingly forced out of his comfort zone, over-pressing and lapsing into error with ever greater frequency as the contest evolved.  

The difference between the two men was underscored in the second game, when Ruud, attempting to fend off the second of two break points, gambolled into the net behind a whipped forehand. It looked to all intents and purposes a decent shot, until Nadal swept a forehand past him of infinitely greater pace, precision and spin. It was a chalk and cheese moment, one that did much to support the pre-match narrative of master against apprentice. It was also a reminder that practising with the Spaniard is a far cry from facing him in his own backyard.

“It’s really challenging and really tough,” said Ruud. “His numbers speak for themselves. He has never lost a final here, and there is a reason why.

“It is tough to describe. I mean, he plays the same style in practice and matches. He takes the practices very seriously, and so do I. If we practice and play sets, I think we both want to try to win.  

“But the circumstances were a bit different today. It was the first time I have experienced this situation and played a grand slam final. I don’t think it really got to me until I stepped on court and saw the full stadium and felt the atmosphere in the crowd. It was a bit tough to find myself comfortable in the situation in the beginning. 

“As the match went on, I tended to feel a little bit better and I could calm down and breathe out a little bit more. But it was challenging because you are playing him, the most winning-slam player ever, and on this court in the final it’s not too easy.”

Having fallen behind, Ruud was unexpectedly handed an immediate route back into the set by an error-strewn Nadal service game. Then, at the start of game four, after hammering away one of his best forehands of the afternoon, Ruud cast a little look down the court towards Nadal. Whatever he was looking for, he did not find it. Perhaps unnerved by his opponent’s imperturbable demeanour, he began to seek a level of power beyond his natural threshold. A forehand fizzed wide. Nadal went into lockdown mode. Inevitably, a second break followed. 

Now Nadal was warming to his task. The famed whiplash forehand started to land with unerring venom and bite, flying up off the clay as though launched from high up in the stands. Ruud showed some delightful touches – a delicious drop shot, loaded with backspin, that the sliding Spaniard got nowhere near, a beautifully timed volley as he served to stay in the set at 2-5 – but the opener was only going one way. 

Relaxed smiles were exchanged in the Nadal box. Chants of “Ra-fa! Ra-fa!” reverberated around Chatrier, just as they have so often over the past fortnight. In the autumn of his career, the indifference towards his excellence once shown by the pro-Federer locals has given way to a deep affection.

Ruud was far from done. Having dropped the first set against Marin Cilic in the semi-finals, he had fought his way back by switching to a more aggressive key, and now he made a similar change of tack. He moved inside the baseline, seeking to dictate with his forehand. He began to live with Nadal in the rallies. He also leavened the mix with some fine touch play. 

Ruud needed all his resourcefulness to escape the opening game of set two, in which Nadal spurned three break points. Having seen off the danger, however, he began to play his best tennis of the afternoon. One forehand pick-up, flicked nonchalantly across the face of the net at an angle so extreme the ball almost ended up in Nadal’s racket bag, drew applause from the Spaniard. Nadal was unsettled, errors creeping into his game. A double fault handed Ruud a love break, and suddenly the man from Oslo was 3-1 ahead.

The reaction was instant. Nadal pressed, stepping in to drill a crosscourt backhand, only for Ruud to pull off a blistering forehand recovery shot before crushing a winner. Nadal pressed harder, spinning the ball high above the Norwegian’s shoulders. Ruud hit back with a blazing forehand. But the pressure was building, and the next big forehand went long. A patient point from Nadal prised another error from the Norwegian, and the contest was as good as over. Nadal would not lose another game. The party had begun. It remains to be seen whether there will be many happy returns.

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