Alcaraz cautious amid wave of Wimbledon hype

Carlos Alcaraz will come into Wimbledon cold, with the Spaniard inactive since losing a Roland Garros quarter-final to countryman and mentor Rafael Nadal nearly a month ago.

The ATP No. 7’s profile has dropped slightly on the radar during the grass court season as he rests a right elbow injury.

The teenager got in a hit-out at a London exhibition this week but lost to Frances Tiafoe.

With little or no experience on the grass, Alcaraz faces a huge challenge to live up to even some of the predictions for his future success.

“In the last few weeks I haven’t been able to train at the level I would have liked and I’ve come a bit expecting to see how I was going to be,” he said.

“I hope to continue improving little by little.”

He added: “Some are making me a favourite but honestly, I don’t think so because there are much better players than me on grass, like (Matteo) Berrettini, (Novak) Djokovic or Nadal.

“I’m going to try to enjoy this surface to the fullest, not only now, but also in the future. the future.”

The fifth seed will open his Wimbledon campaign against a tough grass-court customer in Germany’s Jan-Lennard Struff.

The Spaniard is playing on grass for only the second time at the senior level and third time overall while No. 158 Struff has a decade of experience on the lawns but has never been out of the Wimbledon third round.