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NEW YORK — The worst time to play the worst match of your career is when your opponent is playing the best match of theirs.

Carlos Alcaraz found that out at the U.S. Open on Thursday night, as Botic van de Zandschulp, world No. 74, knocked him out of the tournament in straight sets, 6-1, 7-5, 6-4.

It was Alcaraz’s worst defeat since two weeks ago, when he put in an error-strewn performance against Gael Monfils in Cincinnati.

After van de Zandschulp raced through the first set, Alcaraz, who had been listless, tried to get back to business. He broke back from 2-1 down in the second set, rousing himself and the crowd, as he has done so many times before from losing positions.

This time, he sputtered, rather than sparked. Van de Zandschulp never really dropped his level of tennis, and broke at 5-5 and 4-4 to give himself the chance to serve for the second set, and then for the match.

The Dutchman was peaking, playing the tennis of his life. But it was not a case of redlining, when a player dishes out a buffet of ridiculous winners and shots from another galaxy. Instead, van de Zandschulp defended resolutely, covering incredible amounts of court and producing difficult shots when on the stretch and under pressure time and again. In attack, he rushed the net, where he won 28 of 35 points played, disallowing Alcaraz from moving into the front half of the court where he is so naturally comfortable.

Van de Zandschulp had never beaten a top-10 player at a Grand Slam tournament before this match, but he has been ranked inside the top 20, with six top-10 wins on the ATP Tour.

Botic van de Zandschulp had never beaten a top-10 player at a Grand Slam tournament. (Photo: Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images)

Alcaraz, the French Open and Wimbledon champion, hadn’t lost so early at a Grand Slam for more than three years. Then, he had just turned 18. He was unrecognisable from the four-time major winner he is now.

Such a seismic result invites sweeping contemplations of “what it means for tennis,” but ultimately it doesn’t mean all that much. The bigger question is what it means for Alcaraz himself.

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“I have to think about it, I have to learn about it,” Alcaraz said in press conference as he chastised himself for not having learnt from previous defeats like this one. A reason for that might be that so many similar performances have culminated in victory. He has a remarkable 12-1 winning record in five-set matches, but is still yet to win a match from two sets down.

It is easy enough to excuse an opponent who has nothing to lose playing the best match of their career. It is harder to excuse — and to explain — a sustained run of lackadaisical sets, many of which are lost to history because Alcaraz ultimately won the matches that contained them.

At the French Open and at Wimbledon, Alcaraz returned poorly for long spells, and could barely find the court for much of his encounter with Dutch qualifier Jesper De Jong, in the second round in Paris. He was similarly dreadful for long spells of his Wimbledon matches against Frances Tiafoe and Ugo Humbert — matches like the one against van de Zandschulp, in which Alcaraz found himself in a trough while his opponent hit a peak. On those occasions, he hit a ludicrous shot and rolled down hill from there. Not so Thursday night.

Narrowing the distance between their highest and their lowest level of match play is one of myriad hard-to-acquire skills that the ‘Big Three’ of Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal made look easy.

The height of their floor was as important as the height of their ceiling, meaning that the gap between their best and their worst was pretty small. They could all have bad days, but they rarely had days where they looked as out of sorts as Alcaraz can look in his worst moments.

Carlos Alcaraz, pictured at the 2024 Australian Open, does not always know how to respond to adversity. (Julian Finney / Getty Images)

Their absurd consistency is also a backdrop for Thursday’s result. Novak Djokovic has gone out this early at a major once in his last 72 entries. Roger Federer did so once in his final 66.

Alcaraz will now hope that this loss doesn’t hit him as hard as some other setbacks have. After losing in the semifinals of last year’s U.S. Open, he looked out of sorts for the rest of 2023. He didn’t win another title until Indian Wells the following March, eight months on from his previous trophy.

The Spaniard, who completed his ascension to the upper echelons of tennis when he won the title in New York in 2022, saluted the crowd as he departed the court, in a season he will remember most for winning those consecutive Grand Slam titles. That will not take away from the nature of the defeat, in which his decision-making looked confused and his groundstrokes routinely misfired.

After the match, Alcaraz admitted he had expected an easier assignment. “I think he played great. He played really good tennis. I thought he was going to give me more points,” he said.

“I think my level stayed at the same point all the match, and it wasn’t enough to win the match or to give myself the chance of getting into the match,” he said.

Van de Zandschulp, who contemplated quitting tennis earlier this year, said he was lost for words when it was over. So too was the sporting world, even if the peaks and troughs of this second-round encounter may be lost to the tennis landscape before too long.

(Top photo: Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images)