The Spanish Carlos Alcaraz He beat the Norwegian Casper Ruud this Saturday 6-4 and 6-4 to access the final of the Paris tournament, the last ATP Masters 1000 of the season and which is held on a hard court, where he will face the American Ben Shelton this Sunday.
The Murcian, champion of the Australian Open and the Doha, Tokyo and Vienna tournaments in 2026, aspires to the 29th trophy of his record in the last stretch of the season inspired, where he will have two tournaments left in Italy: the Nitto ATP Finals, in Turin, and the Davis Cup, in Bologna. Alcaraz will compete for his eighth title in this category.
To give himself the option to link the Paris trophy with the recent one in the Austrian capital, the El Palmar player took advantage of the Ruud’s tiredness. The Alcaraz quarterfinal match the day before ended late, but the Norwegian’s match against the Portuguese Nuno Borges ended directly at dawn, so recovering was the key. Alcaraz made the most of the condition of having won six of their previous seven duels on the circuit against Ruud. Although the Norwegian resolved his first two serves without scares this time, From his third turn of serve he always started with 0-15 against and it was a matter of time before something failed.
The third chance to break was the charm for Alcaraz in the seventh game, consolidating such rent immediately and blank. What’s more, he also won his next serve at blank, which allowed him to tie the first set in 47 minutes and make it clear that the battle the previous day against the American Taylor Fritz had taken little toll on him.
In the second set, Ruud improved his service performance and avoided problems until the ninth game, where they had reached 4-4 because the player from Murcia comfortably solved each service obstacle. That’s when he showed off Alcaraz his greatest cunning, subtracting at the feet of his opponent for 0-15 and achieved a cross, deep and drive pass for 0-30.
Quickly He won three break points and at 15-40 a rather dull Ruud did not escape aliveunable to bother the rest at all in the next game, which sealed Alcaraz’s victory at the Plenitude Arena after a match that lasted one hour and 27 minutes.
Alcaraz showed his hunger again in 2026 that was clouded at times with his wrist injury in Barcelona. Despite four months away from the slopes, Alcaraz is heading towards a successful season with a triumphant outcome after the aforementioned successes in Tokyo and Vienna. In the Paris final, and more eventful, the Palmar native will face Shelton who eliminated him in the US Open on his return, then in the quarterfinals.
Furthermore, in this confrontation there will be morbidity because Shelton will have Juan Carlos Ferrer, former Alcaraz coach, as his new coach next seasonand continues with his consecration campaign at 24 years old, in search of a fifth title in 2026, when he had been adding only one title at a time since 2023.
