Alcaraz to Vanity Fair: “I don’t want to become a slave to tennis”

Carlos Alcaraz spoke to Vanity Fair in an interview published on May 12, 2026, his first long public appearance after withdrawing from Rome and Roland Garros due to the right wrist problem he picked up in Barcelona. The Spaniard touched on two raw nerves, the injury and his relationship with Jannik Sinner, and he did so with a candor he had not yet shown this season.

On the wrist, Alcaraz does not hide. "At certain moments I didn't stop to take a break and that led me to play badly and get injured," he admitted, acknowledging that pulling out of the Italian swing and Paris is the price of a calendar he failed to manage. The Roland Garros withdrawal, announced on April 24, leaves tennis without the defending champion in Paris and hands Sinner an even wider window at the top of the ranking.

On his rival, Alcaraz chooses the path of openly declared affection. "We are fighting for the same goal, but there's no need to hate each other," he said, describing a dynamic in which on court they try to "hurt each other as much as possible during the match," only to be, off it, "two guys who get along really well." The Spaniard also pulled himself out of historical comparisons: "Ours isn't yet comparable to the great rivalries in tennis history, because we still have many years ahead of us."

The line that lingers, though, is another one. "I don't want to become a slave to tennis." Coming from someone who has just turned 23 and has already won seven Slams, it sounds less like a motivational cliché and more like a request, to himself, for permission not to answer every call the tour puts in front of him. The wrist, for now, has decided for him.