Tennis icon Boris Becker has voiced his concerns about Carlos Alcaraz\u2019s mental health and questioned the way the Spaniard\u2019s team are handling his career.<\/p>\n
Prior to the start of the clay season, Alcaraz<\/a>\u00a0spoke candidly about the challenges he dealt with during a difficult period this year.<\/p>\n The four-time major champion described his opening match defeat to David Goffin at the Miami Open as the \u201cfinal straw\u201d and revealed he had considered stepping away from tennis \u201cfor months\u201d afterwards.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the end, in these situations, you think about a lot of things, and when something that hurt you is so recent, you never really put it into perspective,\u201d the 21-year-old said.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of thoughts come to mind: stop, stop for a week, skip a tournament, stop for several months, keep training, take a vacation, and then train for what\u2019s next\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of thoughts came to mind, and one of the best things I did was take a few days off and give myself the opportunity to think clearly and put things into perspective, and then decide from there.\u201d<\/p>\n Having taken a brief holiday with family after Miami, Alcaraz won the Monte Carlo Masters and reached the final of the Barcelona Open.<\/p>\n On an episode of his podcast with former WTA star Andrea Petkovic, Becker addressed Alcaraz\u2019s struggles and asserted that the world No 3 needs to be protected by those around him.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re talking about a 21-year-old who couldn\u2019t cope with the expectations and the pressure anymore,\u201d said the six-time Grand Slam champion. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about mental health.<\/p>\n \u201cSomeone like that almost reached the point of depression. So those around him have to ask themselves: haven\u2019t we done something wrong? Demanding too much of such a young player? He almost has to act like a machine\u2026 at 21 it\u2019s hard to say no.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to protect Carlos from himself. But the point is that you can see that he\u2019s overexerting himself, he does too much and I really hope that whether it\u2019s his coach or his manager or his father, they need to [communicate], because we still need him in ten years.<\/p>\n Carlos Alcaraz told his schedule was to blame for injuries as former world No 4 offers advice<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The 5 men with the highest Madrid Open win percentage: Carlos Alcaraz 88.24%<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s the most spectacular player on the tour right now, he gets the most spectators in, has the largest fanbase, but he can\u2019t play every week.\u201d<\/p>\n The former world No 1 also shed light on\u00a0a telling conversation he had with Alcaraz at the\u00a0Laureus World Sports Awards ceremony in Madrid on Monday.<\/p>\n Becker told Alcaraz: \u201cThis isn\u2019t a sprint, your life is a marathon.\u201d<\/p>\n Intriguingly, Becker revealed that Alcaraz replied: \u201cYou\u2019re right. Talk to my people.\u201d<\/p>\n The German also shared an experience he went through at the same stage of his own career.<\/p>\n \u201cI was also in that phase when I was 21 to 22, when you\u2019re not doing it from your heart, you\u2019re running from one commitment to the next, and the contracts are very high-paying, and the tournaments have signed contracts, which means you are contractually bound and only an injury can save you, but that is not how it should be, which is why I was worried for him,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope he will be fit again in time to defend his title at Roland Garros.\u201d<\/p>\n READ NEXT:\u00a0Dominic Thiem rates Alexander Zverev\u2019s Grand Slam hopes as he names French Open favourites<\/a> The post Boris Becker shares heartfelt advice he gave Carlos Alcaraz in revealing private chat<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tennis icon Boris Becker has voiced his concerns about Carlos Alcaraz\u2019s mental health and questioned the way the Spaniard\u2019s team are handling his career. Prior to the start of the clay season, Alcaraz\u00a0spoke candidly about the challenges he dealt with during a difficult period this year. The four-time major champion described his opening match defeat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Carlos Alcaraz News<\/h2>\n
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