When Carlos Alcaraz arrives, the air changes. A rockstar buzz follows him around and he is entirely comfortable with it, as if being adored is a natural state of affairs.
Jannik Sinner possesses a quieter aura and walked out to No 1 Court blinking as if slightly surprised that anyone had turned up to see him play.
The No1 seed, Sinner, and the defending champion, Alcaraz, remain on course to meet each other in the semi-finals at Wimbledon after dispatching two very tricky opponents to reach the quarter-final stage. There is no doubt which of the pair will play to the crowd and feed off its energy. Sinner has a different and less demonstrative way of handling an audience but they still respond to his understated brilliance — almost as if feeling the need to let him know just how magnificent he is — because he does not always appear to realise just how imperious and therefore delightful his tennis is. Never underestimate the Wimbledon crowd’s ability to acknowledge genius no matter how quiet the competitor.
Against Ugo Humbert, Alcaraz delivered plenty of Hollywood shots, visibly generating power allied to deadly accuracy, and he has an uncanny knack of making the fans feel they played their part in them. As such, his myriad mini-celebrations were not self-indulgent but a necessary part of the Alcaraz experience. He draws you in, makes you love him, care for him.
“As I say many times, the crowd is a really important part for me,” Alcaraz, 21, said after winning 6-3, 6-4, 1-6, 7-5. “Obviously when they are not cheering you up, you have to forget it and think about your tennis or think about yourself.”
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Álvaro Morata, the captain of the Spanish national football team, is a very close friend of Alcaraz and the three-times grand-slam singles champion looked the tiniest bit forlorn at the suggestion he will next play on Tuesday, the same day that Spain face France in the semi-finals of the European Championship.
His fourth-round match was full of light and shade. Once Humbert, the left-handed 26-year-old, found a way to unsettle the No3 seed he then tried to forge a connection with the crowd. His gestures were almost apologetic, not least because with Alcaraz it is entirely guileless.
The Spaniard labelled as “unbelievable” a winning shot while he sat splayed on the grass, which the crowd lapped up. It was all highly entertaining.
At the start of the fifth game the rain began hammering on the roof and Alcaraz began hammering the Humbert serve, breaking in a manner as ominous as the rolls of thunder above Centre Court. There were flashes of brilliance from the Frenchman — who grew up playing on carpet courts which are similar to grass — but never at the right moment. Not, anyway, until the third set when he finally broke serve thanks to an errant Alcaraz forehand. He broke serve twice more with real panache to take the third set.
Alcaraz broke at the start of the fourth set with a contained ferociousness and looked energised by the whole experience of being briefly outclassed but Humbert broke straight back and for the first time Alcaraz appeared frustrated. He nonetheless then broke again and was the first to hold serve (only to be broken once more by an opponent who was growing in aggressive confidence). Alcaraz grumbled to those in his box but saved a clutch of break points and then began pulling off crisp, beautiful and unlikely passing shots to take control of a wild fourth set.
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Sinner���s match was more straightforward as he glided his way into the quarter-finals in straight sets past an opponent who threatened through sheer impetuosity to cause the world No1 a few problems.
Ben Shelton had walked on court wearing headphones which gave him the air of someone with other places to be. The 21-year-old served like he was in a rush too with a startling degree of power but Sinner refused to be intimidated and broke early in the first set, for 3-2, to set a high bar which his opponent could not reach, the Italian then taking the opening two sets in little more than an hour.
There is only one year between the pair but Sinner, 22, was largely the more mature in his decision-making. There was a rare broad and cheeky grin from Sinner after he won a game point having played the ball through his legs.
“That was just luck,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.” It was the very opposite of milking it.
But he made enough unforced errors to add a layer of tension. Shelton gave his all in the third-set tie-break and even earned himself four set points but Sinner quietly prevailed 6-2, 6-4, 7-6 (11-9).
