Alcaraz in Paris: the draw between lefties and Medvedev

Carlos Alcaraz arrives at the Rolex Paris Masters (2-8 November) as the No. 2 seed, with Jannik Sinner out with a knee injury and Alexander Zverev in the other half of the draw. On paper the path is favorable. The risk lies in the tournament itself. Paris is the Masters 1000 where Alcaraz performs worst, five wins and five losses in his career and never past the quarterfinals. His week will be decided at two specific points, the first match after the bye and the semifinal, where the draw projects Daniil Medvedev.

The opener: two big servers against a serve still bedding in

After the bye, Alcaraz faces the winner of Jiri Lehecka-Alex Michelsen. He beat both in Tokyo a month ago, and both times he won the first set in a tie-break. Against Michelsen he saved three set points before closing out 7-6, 4-6, 6-1. In the final against Lehecka he won 7-6, 6-4, moving to 4-1 in the head-to-head.

The technical crux is the return. Lehecka and Michelsen build their service games on the flat first serve and the forehand on the third shot, and indoors, with no wind, that combination holds up for a long time. Alcaraz has to return deep down the middle to take the server's attacking forehand away. If the return stays short, the point is over before he can get into the rally.

Then there is his own serve. Coming back from the tenosynovitis in his right wrist, which sidelined him from mid-April until the US Open, Alcaraz has sped up his service motion. In Tokyo, while he was still working on it, Michelsen broke him twice in the second set. And in Paris the first match after the bye has already knocked him out twice: Roman Safiullin in 2023, Cameron Norrie in 2025.

Third round and quarterfinal: the lefty problem

In the third round the name to circle is Ugo Humbert, who has to beat Botic van de Zandschulp and then the winner of Brandon Nakashima-Matteo Berrettini to get there. The Frenchman beat Alcaraz right here in 2024, 6-1, 3-6, 7-5. A year later Norrie, another lefty, knocked him out. In September, in the US Open quarterfinal, came the third lefty: Ben Shelton, in a fifth-set tie-break.

The pattern is the classic lefty one. The wide slice first serve to the ad side runs onto Alcaraz's backhand and pulls him off the court; indoors the sliced ball stays low and the return comes back short, onto the server's forehand. Alcaraz can step back a meter to return and buy time, but then he has to win the court back in the rally. If Nakashima or Berrettini shows up in the third round instead, the theme goes back to that of the opener: keeping the return deep against a heavy first serve.

In the quarterfinal the draw projects Arthur Fils or Taylor Fritz. Fils has lost all three previous meetings, the latest in the Doha final in February (6-2, 6-1). Fritz brings another heavy serve, but from the baseline Alcaraz's forehand has more angles available than his.

The semifinal: Medvedev

Medvedev, the No. 4 seed, beat him in March in the Indian Wells semifinal, 6-3, 7-6, ending the 16-match winning streak with which Alcaraz had opened the season. The head-to-head still favors the Spaniard.

The Russian returns from far behind the baseline and sends the ball back deep down the middle, taking away the angles from which Alcaraz builds his forehand. In 2025, at the debut in La Défense Arena, the court had been slowed down compared with the last edition at Bercy, and Alcaraz liked it because it allowed rallies. That extra time helps Medvedev defend too. To beat him Alcaraz has to shorten points with the drop shot and finish at the net, instead of trying to win the cross-court exchange from the baseline. The two also meet in the Vienna semifinal, a week before their possible meeting in Paris.

Also in Medvedev's quarter are Flavio Cobolli, the No. 5 seed, and Rafael Jódar, the No. 9.

Alcaraz is the favorite in the bottom half, with Medvedev as the most serious obstacle. In the final he would most likely meet Zverev, already assured of finishing the year at No. 1: the head-to-head is 7-6 to Alcaraz, the last meeting the Australian Open semifinal won in five sets, and the final would be an even contest. The condition that would overturn the forecast is the opener. If against Lehecka or Michelsen the reworked serve concedes breaks as it did in Tokyo, Paris becomes a first-match exit for the third time in four editions. In that match, watch the points won on the second serve: they are the first signal of how well the new motion holds up under pressure.