Alcaraz returns to training and tennis world already forgets the obvious

Greg Rusedski watched a video of Carlos Alcaraz hitting forehands and let out a sigh of relief. The wrist is fine, says the former Brit. Good news, of course. But look, we’ve seen this movie before.

Injured player posts training footage. Optimistic pundit writes column. Fan breathes easy. Soon enough comes the tournament, the strange early loss, the question of whether it still hurts. Rusedski isn’t wrong to note the Spaniard’s clean movement. It’s just too early to turn video into prognosis.

What Courier and Edmund pointed out in an ATP Tour interview is harder to swallow. Sinner and Alcaraz, they say, improve constantly. Constantly. That means stopping is regressing. Alcaraz hasn’t played since April. Five months. Five months in which Sinner won Roland Garros, kept his rhythm, consolidated his lead.

Alcaraz reclaimed the No. 2 ranking without stepping on court since April. Nice for the résumé, bad for direct comparison. Number two on paper doesn’t win a point in the tie-break.

The question isn’t whether the wrist healed. It’s whether his game still scares the same way. The serve, the variation, the ability to knock an opponent off balance in three shots. That doesn’t come back in a training video. It comes back in Cincinnati, at the US Open, the first time a top-20 player strings together three winners and Alcaraz has to answer with grit.

Rusedski saw what he wanted to see. Courier reminded us what we should fear. The Spaniard has more than enough talent to make up lost time. But lost time is lost time. There are no shortcuts.

The next test comes in August. Cincinnati, then New York. Then we’ll see if the video was worth anything.