Carlos Alcaraz is one special player and he's shown that more than once with the fact that he's the youngest number one event certainly boosting that claim.
Being very good at a very young age is not universal to Alcaraz as we've seen that before. There have been teenage grand slams champion but there is something special about Alcaraz. He's not just a great talent, he's a proven player by now, one whose popularity is rising dramatically and that's very good for tennis.
Comparing him to previous greats, Wilander said:
“I mean, honestly, when
Roger Federer arrived it wasn’t a big deal
because he wasn’t as good when he was very young. He’d beat Pete Sampras at Wimbledon, and then suddenly when Federer
started winning Grand Slams, he became the biggest thing that tennis had
ever seen because of the gracefulness that he played with. And now you take Carlos Alcaraz, who, for me, is the birth of a
tennis player who has lived his life watching
Novak Djokovic, Rafael
Nadal and Roger Federer."
Superstar
The Spaniard is already a superstar and Wilander believes that he will take tennis to a new level:
“And I don’t think he’s based his game on anyone but he’s been sort of poisoned by watching these guys play. He moves like Djokovic, he’s passionate like Nadal, he has shot making skills like Federer. But the one thing that these guys didn’t do, is they didn’t show the world that they’re having so much fun all the time. And that’s why Carlos Alcaraz, to me, is going to be the main reason
why tennis players – especially on the men’s side – are going to start
making way more money. He’s going to be like the Tiger Woods effect because people want to be a part of tennis because of Carlos Alcaraz.”