Stats illustrate how Carlos Alcaraz returned to his explosive best in Indian Wells

Carlos Alcaraz truly exploded on the world scene in 2022 when he won the US Open, in one fell swoop winning his first slam title and becoming the youngest man to ever top the ATP rankings.

The Spaniard did it through a combination of blistering power and lightning speed, able to turn defence into attack in the blink of an eye. Together with brilliant touch, he stormed to the top of the game and went on to win Wimbledon the following year with that epic win over Novak Djokovic in the final.

But his victory in the Indian Wells Masters on Sunday was his first title since then, and it seems that Alcaraz is back to his very best, in terms of his explosiveness, something that seemed to have deserted him a little in recent weeks, niggling injuries perhaps stopping him from operating on full burner.

Using data produced by Tennis Data Innovations, TennisViz show how he’s done it.

Alcaraz turns on the power

In 2022 and all the way through the Wimbledon final in 2023, Alcaraz was the only man on the ATP Tour to feature in the top five of both the Conversion (percentage of time a player wins when he has been in attack) and Steal Score (how often a player wins a point when he’s been in a defensive situation).

Those stats dropped in the second half of 2023 and the early stages of 2024, falling to close to the Tour average from both, well down the list among top players. The table below shows the change.

But in Indian Wells in 2024, he stormed back to his best, beating Jannik Sinner and Daniil Medvedev in consecutive matches to win the title for the second successive year. As the table below shows, his conversion score was second only to Sinner, who has been in the form of his life in the past six months, winning his first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open.

And no one is better at turning defence into attack than Alcaraz, as he demonstrated several times against Medvedev in the final. In Indian Wells, no one got near his stats, as the table below shows, with him winning more than 45 percent of points when on the defensive, well clear of Holger Rune in second.

Steal Score Leaderboard Indian Wells 2024 (Quarter-finalists)

Forehand also back to full force

When Alcaraz is playing with full confidence, then his forehand is firing. When his forehand is firing, he’s at his best.

In Indian Wells, not only were his forehand stats way up – his performance shot quality (calculated using speed, spin, depth and width of his shots) was 9.0, miles above the Tour average. He also felt comfortable enough to target the forehand of his opponents 50 percent of the time, up from his usual average of 45 percent.

Some of that could be that he played Alexander Zverev in the quarter-finals, with the German’s backhand far better than his forehand, but 50 percent is also 10 percent above the Tour average.

As Medvedev said, there were times in the match in Indian Wells where Alcaraz took over.

“Carlos, his ball goes so fast that it goes fast from the beginning to the end,” he told reporters. “Basically it’s an advantage. It’s an advantage because when we played some rallies today, there were not so many, but when I managed to set up a rally, I felt like the only thing I can do is hit strong but not really put him in trouble, and when he makes one good shot I’m in trouble and I lose the point.

“It’s tough. Mentally it’s not easy to play against this.”

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