AN ACE UP YOUR SLEEVE
Before the US Open tennis competition began, Number 2 seed, Carlos Alcaraz was asked to write a message to himself on a slip of paper. His response was short and sweet - almost childlike in its simplicity “Go for it. Don’t be afraid.” On Sunday, after a stunning performance that saw him beat Jannik Sinner in the final, secure his sixth Grand Slam title, and reclaim the world number one ranking, Alcaraz was handed that slip of paper again. He smiled and said, with characteristic, modest understatement: “ I think that’s something I did today.” That quiet confidence, and touch of humility, summed up not just his victory, but the essence of resilience itself. The Lesson of Wimbledon the Alcaraz who strode onto the New York court was not the same young man who had lost in the Wimbledon final just weeks earlier. The 22-year-old admitted that he had gone back, studied the tape of that defeat, and extracted the lessons. He was determined not just to play Sinner again, but to play differently, for a different result. His coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, called his display in the final “a perfect performance.” Alcaraz himself added: “This is the best tournament so far that I have played. The consistency of my level during the whole tournament has been really high, which I’m really proud of. The three weeks I spent here are a privilege.” A privilege, yes. But also, the product of deep reflection, relentless preparation, and that inner decision not to be afraid. My Own Love Affair with Alcaraz and Sinner I must confess something. My love affair with watching these two players, from watching them trade strokes in a quarter-final back in 2022. It was Thursday morning, 8 September. The time was 07:30am. I was wrestling children into school uniforms, feeling a little fuzzy after a celebratory glass too many the night before, my editor was impatiently texting about a piece that was overdue, and I had an appointment looming in less than an hour. In short, I was under the cosh and it was not my most “together” moment. But instead of me dealing with my to-do list, I was glued to a screen, utterly transfixed by the US Open quarter-final between the then 19-year-old Alcaraz, and 21-year-old Sinner. They were not the two top players in the world at that time, yet there was a mesmerizing quality about them both. As I watched those two young men battle it out under the floodlights of Flushing Meadows, “ready, reflective, and resilient” were the qualities I saw embodied on court. Modern-Day Gladiators. The match had already gone deep into the night in New York, five hours of grueling play by the time I tuned in. Both men were exhausted, though you would hardly have known it. They were modern-day gladiators, trading blows in front of a crowd who were as enthralled as I was. With one eye on the kids as I shoved them out the door, the other was monitoring the game’s momentum. It kept shifting: one lapse in concentration, one crack in belief, and the advantage swung. Neither man wanted it more than the other; they both wanted it utterly. This wasn’t about desire. It was about resilience, who could absorb the pressure, who could
recover from the twists and turns, who could keep believing, when belief itself became the most fragile thing in the world. I found myself cancelling my morning schedule and surrendering to truancy, because I simply could not look away. The commentators’ superlatives, “incredible, magnificent, unbelievable “were not exaggerations. It still is one of the finest tennis matches I have ever witnessed. The Inner Game In his on-court interview, Alcaraz was asked how he had done it, especially after saving match point in the fourth set. His answer was striking: “You have to believe in yourself all the time. The minute you stop believing in yourself, the game is over.” That wasn’t bravado. It was the truth of top-level sport, and, I would argue, of life itself. Belief isn’t something that magically appears when you most need it. It is something trained, just like a forehand or a serve. Mental training sits alongside physical training in the lives of elite athletes. And that lesson, belief as a discipline, is one we can all take to heart. Stress, Strain, and Adaptation Let’s be clear: resilience is not the absence of stress. It’s not some Zen-like ability to remain untouched by the storms around you. Alcaraz and Sinner were drenched in sweat and swimming in stress that night, and again last Sunday. Every rally was a spike of tension, every service game a test of nerve. Resilience is about what you do in those moments. Do you freeze? Do you collapse inward? Or do you adapt, return serve, and keep showing up and coming back, even when your legs are heavy and your lungs are burning? Alcaraz had written his note: Go for it. Don’t be afraid. And when the crucial moments came, that is exactly what he did. What It Means for Us So, what can we, non-tennis champions, take from all this? The truth is that resilience, grit, and mental toughness, whatever you want to call it, are not the preserve of athletes. They are life skills. And here’s the good news: they are trainable. We can all learn to recognize when our self-belief is faltering. We can all practice recovery after setbacks. And we can all remind ourselves, in the words of Alcaraz, that “the minute you stop believing in yourself, the game is over.” It’s not always about whether the chicken or the egg came first, whether grit leads to resilience or resilience fosters grit. The point is that both matter, and both can be cultivated. Just don’t stick your head in the sand like an ostrich while debating the sequence. The Power of a Simple Note Alcaraz’s story this year is a reminder that sometimes the most profound truths are the simplest. “Go for it. Don’t be afraid.” It’s a mantra for tennis. But it’s also a mantra for work, for relationships, for creativity, and for life itself. When the pressure mounts, when self-doubt creeps in, when the game feels lost, those words might just be the ones to pull us through.
