Historic Season Earns Alcaraz Most Improved Player Of The Year Award

The accolades for Carlos Alcaraz’s stunning 2022 breakthrough have come from far and wide. Now, his fellow players have taken the chance to acknowledge the 19-year-old’s remarkable rise to World No. 1 by voting the Spaniard as the Most Improved Player of the Year in the year-end ATP Awards.

"I’m really happy to receive this award, and I want to say thank you to all my colleagues who voted me as the Most Improved Player of the Year," said Alcaraz. "For me it’s an amazing achievement. This year has been a really good year for me, a dream year for me, and I’m looking to improve the year in 2023. Thank you very much."

Billed as a budding superstar on the heels of a strong finish to 2021 — one that saw him reach the US Open quarter-finals and later claim the Intesa Sanpaolo Next Gen ATP Finals title — Alcaraz had a lot to live up to this season. The Spaniard not only met those lofty expectations, he exceeded them in record time.

After winning the first of his five titles on the year at the ATP 500 in Rio de Janeiro to break into the Top 20, Alcaraz showed he could deliver on the game's biggest stages by winning his first ATP Masters 1000 title in Miami after a semi-final run in Indian Wells. He then brought the show to his home fans, claiming a Spanish trophy double in Barcelona and Madrid, beating Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Alexander Zverev in succession in the latter event.

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More success put Alcaraz in position to reach the top spot in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings at the US Open, and he took the chance with aplomb to become the youngest World No. 1 since the rankings began in 1973.

“For me it’s a dream come true being No. 1 in the world, to be a Grand Slam champion,” Alcaraz told the ATP Tour after the US Open.

“Everything has come so fast. I didn’t think at the beginning of the year that I’m going to have the year that I’m having right now," he continued. "I always believe in my team and in my work, so this is something that came with the hard work that I put in every day, the hard preseason, the work during the year with my team. Everything pays off.”

It was the second consecutive year that Alcaraz had been nominated for Most Improved Player in the ATP Awards. His fellow nominees in the category this year were Maxime Cressy, Jack Draper and Holger Rune.

from Tennis - ATP World Tour https://ift.tt/0yROwlj