Carlos Alcaraz has been told “it will take time” to recover from his wrist injury with Patrick Mouratoglou saying “I don’t see how he can play Roland Garros”.
Seven-time Grand Slam winner Alcaraz picked up the injury during his first-round win at the Barcelona Open last week and he withdrew from the tournament a day later, but his coaching team were confident he would return to action this week.
However, further scans have revealed the injury to be a lot more serious than initially thought and he was forced to withdraw from the Madrid Open while it has been accepted that he won’t feature at the Italian Open with major doubts over his French Open title defence.
The player himself has adopted a wait-and-see policy with regard to the clay-court Grand Slam, but he also admitted he won’t take any risks, saying: “Pushing myself at this Roland Garros could really harm me for future tournaments, so we’ll see how the test goes; that’s what we’re focusing on.”
Those comments were made during Monday’s Laureus Sports Awards in Madrid, where he was named World Sportsman of the Year.
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Renowned coach Mouratoglou, who mentored the great Serena Williams as well as the likes of Simona Halep, Stefanos Tsitispas and more recently Naomi Osaka, gave his verdict during an Instagram video.
“Based on the information we have and what we have seen with the forearm of Carlos Alcaraz, I don’t see how he can play Roland Garros,” he said.
“First of all, I’m glad Carlos Alcaraz is thinking about his future rather than the short term. How bad is the injury? I have no idea. Seeing those images makes me think ‘I don’t know how he can play Roland Garros.’ But maybe it’s not that bad and it was only security, I don’t know.
“But my experience tells me that if they decided to put him in a cast, it’s not a good sign.
“First of all because the wrist has to remain completely still. And then, for a week, two weeks, three weeks, I don’t know, the muscles are not going to work at all, the muscles are going to start to shrink and then it will take time to come back.
“So for me, it is difficult to imagine Carlos playing at Roland Garros. Of course, it’s a difficult decision not to play in Madrid, which is his home city, and probably not to play in Rome and maybe even skip Roland Garros.
“He said: ‘A career is long. I’m not going to jeopardise potentially my career for the short term, even though the short term is very important. Carlos is a double defending champion at Roland Garros. He is also in a race to be No 1 with Jannik, potentially can miss a second Grand Slam.
“A lot of people say that if Carlos doesn’t play Roland Garros, then for sure Jannik is going to win it, but we will talk about it in a different video.”