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Rafael Nadal and Iga Swiatek were among the first to congratulate Carlos Alcaraz on his Roland Garros title on Sunday. The stars were joined by legends including Rod Laver and Billie Jean King. 

Alcaraz is now a three-time major champion having also triumphed at the US Open in 2022 and Wimbledon in 2023.

ATPTour.com looks at social media reaction following Alcaraz's victory against Alexander Zverev.

Enhorabuena @carlosalcaraz por esta inmensa victoria!!!! Grande!!!! Muy contento por tus éxitos !!! ?? #Vamos https://t.co/bIBbJhyh4B

Amazing work @carlosalcaraz ??
Congrats! ????????

Carlos Alcaraz has made three-surface history. The Spaniard on Sunday won the Roland Garros title to become the youngest man to earn a major trophy on all three surfaces — clay, hard and grass.

The 21-year-old is just the seventh man to accomplish the feat, joining Rafael Nadal, Mats Wilander, Jimmy Connors, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Andre Agassi.

Male Players To Win A Major Title On All Three Surfaces

Only two of those players claimed a Slam on their third surface before turning 26. Nadal did so aged 22 when he won the 2009 Australian Open, and Wilander was 23 when he triumphed at the 1988 Australian Open.

Alcaraz had already become the youngest man to reach a major final on all three surfaces. He has made three championship matches at Grand Slam tournaments — the 2022 US Open, 2023 Wimbledon and 2024 Roland Garros — and has won them all.

The grass swing commences on the ATP Tour this week, with events at the BOSS OPEN in Stuttgart and the Libema Open in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

Alexander Zverev is the top seed on home soil at the ATP 250 in Stuttgart, while Alex de Minaur leads the field at the ATP 250 event in the Netherlands. ATPTour.com looks at 10 things to watch ahead of this week’s tournaments.

FIVE THINGS TO WATCH IN STUTTGART
1) Top Seed Zverev: Fresh from his run to the final at Roland Garros, Zverev makes his return to grass in front of his home fans in Germany. The 27-year-old, who is competing at the tournament for the first time since 2019, is 34-10 on the season.

2) Shelton & Tiafoe in Action: Ben Shelton will make his debut at the ATP 250, having gone 2-3 on grass last season. The 21-year-old American is the second seed and arrives off the back of a third-round run at Roland Garros. Frances Tiafoe has endured a modest season by his standards, holding a 12-12 record. The American lifted the trophy in Stuttgart last year and will hope a return to the event will help him rediscover his best form.

3) Home Favourites: There are five Germans in the draw, including top seed Zverev. Seventh seed Jan-Lennard Struff reached the title match last year in Stuttgart, where he held championship point. Struff begins against Italian Flavio Cobolli. Yannick Hanfmann takes on countryman Henri Squire, who has received a wild card, with the winner potentially playing former No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings Andy Murray. Murray, who has won seven grass-court titles, reached the final in Stuttgart in 2022. Dominik Koepfer takes on Zhang Zhizhen.

Carlos Alcaraz has made a red-hot start to Sunday’s championship match at Roland Garros, where the Spaniard leads Alexander Zverev 6-3 on Court Philippe-Chatrier.

After a cagey start in which both players dropped their opening service game, Alcaraz locked in on return to clinch the opening set at the clay-court major in Paris. The 21-year-old is bidding to become the youngest player to capture a Grand Slam title on three different surfaces after his triumphs on hard courts at the 2022 US Open and grass at 2023 Wimbledon.

Zverev made a shaky start to his second major final by serving back-to-back double faults to open proceedings, after which the German immediately changed his racquet. He was nonetheless broken three times in the opening set, and also had to fend off two break points to hold in another of his service games at 2-4.

Although not always at his best, Alcaraz deployed good variety to disrupt Zverev’s rhythm, and he was eager to channel the support of a capacity crowd after prevailing in any extended rallies.

ALCARAZ GRABS THE OPENER! 6-3 ??#RolandGarros pic.twitter.com/EszkFyslLq

Despite his obvious disappointment, Jannik Sinner is taking the positives out of his Roland Garros run, which ended at the hands of friend and rival Carlos Alcaraz at the semi-final stage on Friday.

The 22-year-old Italian led the Spaniard by two sets to one before he eventually fell in five sets in a match that lasted four hours and 10 minutes.

“I think it was a great match. For sure the sets he won he played better in the important points. I think that was the key. Obviously disappointed how it ended, but it's part of my growing and the process,” Sinner said. “Thinking back before the tournament reaching this point, I'm obviously very happy.

“In the other way, I'm disappointed about the match today. Now I'm just to keep looking forward to improve, to try to do my best I can and then we see what I can do in the future here in this tournament. If we watch the positive side, I have improved from last year.”

Sinner, who will rise to No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings for the first time on Monday, was competing in the semi-finals at Roland Garros for the first time. The Australian Open champion dropped just one set en route to the semi-finals before he lost to Alcaraz, who improved to 5-4 in the pair’s Lexus ATP Head2Head series.

Carlos Alcaraz advanced to his first Roland Garros final on Friday when he defeated Italian Jannik Sinner 2-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 in a Paris semi-final thriller.

In one of the most anticipated matches of the year, both players struggled to find their best level in the opening two sets. With the match all square at one set all, Alcaraz looked to gain control when Sinner suffered with hand cramp at 2-2 in the third set. The Italian regularly shook out his hand between points and although his service speed dropped in the game, he saved four break points to survive on serve before he received treatment at 3-2.

Sinner came out firing on the resumption to break Alcaraz immediately and held firm on serve to move ahead. Alcaraz refused to surrender in the fourth, though, with both players striking the ball with clean and effortless timing. With little to separate them, the World No. 3 Alcaraz found more quality and intensity in his play at the end of the fourth set to win it and force a decider.

The 21-year-old then produced moments of magic in an absorbing fifth set, breaking Sinner’s serve early with a fierce forehand winner. Alcaraz put his foot down from that moment and refused to let Sinner back in, sealing a mammoth victory on his third match point after four hours and 10 minutes. Alcaraz, who struck 65 winners to Sinner's 39, raised his arms in the air and embraced the roar from the crowd after sealing his win.

"You have to find the joy suffering," Alcaraz said after his win against Sinner, who won two more points than the Spaniard in the match (147-145). "That is the key, even more here on clay at Roland Garros. Long rallies, four-hour matches, five sets. You have to fight, you have to suffer but as I told my team, you have to enjoy suffering."

Marcelo Arevalo and Mate Pavic are one win from earning their first major title as a team.

The ninth seeds eliminated top seeds Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 on Friday in two hours to reach the Roland Garros final.

Granollers and Zeballos won the pair’s two Lexus ATP Head2Head meetings earlier this year without dropping a set. But Arevalo and Pavic rallied from a set down to make their fourth final of the season. They have won titles in Hong Kong and Geneva, and also reached the Rome final.

Granollers and Zeballos only won 62 per cent of their first-serve points, compared to 79 per cent for Arevalo and Pavic according to Infosys Stats. The ninth seeds broke serve twice in the third set to move on to the championship match, in which they will play 11th seeds Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori.

Arevalo and Pavic have won 13 of their past 14 matches. They defeated Bolelli and Vavassori in the Rome semi-finals and the Monte-Carlo quarter-finals without losing a set in either clash.

The depth of his groundstrokes was striking; his court speed and ability to play big points so well, was on another level, while his first-serve percentage under pressure was amazing. Those on the international circuit in the infancy of Open Tennis, knew Björn Borg was coming. For many, they foresaw the break-up of traditional serve-volley tennis with a new level of physicality, intelligence, and consistency in the precocious 15-year-old, fresh out of school.

There had been baseliners before, but instead of yielding to critics of his technique, the Swede was able to absorb punishment in matches and showcase resilience time and again by focusing solely on the next shot. For it’s all Borg had known since first striking a ball against his garage wall on Torekällgatan 30 in Södertälje. He didn’t receive any coaching for the first three years. “Upon leaving school, I gave myself two or three years before I’d potentially return to my studies,” says Borg, 50 years on. He never needed to look back.

“I took training just as seriously as matches from a young age, and that was one of the keys to my breakthrough and career,” Borg told ATPTour.com, from his home in Stockholm. “My mentality was one of my greatest strengths and I went onto court training myself to focus.

“I learned to concentrate initially for an hour, then two hours, and early on the pro circuit, I knew I could last however long the match lasted. In training, I would empty my mind and think only of the present: the next ball, the next shot. I’d focus on switching on and off, of winning the next point. ‘I have to win. I have to get the impossible ball back.’”

Percy Rosberg immediately recognised a special talent, when he first met an 11-year-old Borg in 1967. Today, the 91-year-old still takes the three-minute walk from his apartment to SALK Hall, his second home.

ITA No. 1 Eliot Spizzirri and NCAA men's singles champion Filip Planinsek are among 21 college players who will benefit from direct entry into ATP Challenger Tour events as part of the ATP Next Gen Accelerator.

This will be the second year of the joint initative between ATP and the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) after a successful launch following the 2023 college tennis season. 

The programme was developed to increase the development pathway for top players in the American Collegiate system. Following the NCAA Championships last month at Oklahoma State University, players qualified based on their year-end ranking and/or performance in the NCAA Championships.

Ten of the 21 qualifiers, including Spizzirri and NCAA Singles Finalist Michael Zheng, are repeat qualifiers from 2023.

"Us college guys couldn’t be more grateful to be granted opportunities into these Challenger events because of our results this season. The Tour is extremely challenging, but this boost will provide college guys with a better opportunity to reach their goals and catapult themselves to a ranking where they are consistently qualifying for events on their own," Spizzirri said. "College tennis has proven to be a great stepping stone to the professional tour and this initiative is just another addition to the benefits college has."

The daily routine that had earned him a place in the biggest match of his career was suddenly under threat. Gastón Gaudio, then the No. 44 player in the PIF ATP Rankings, had beaten his compatriot David Nalbandian in the 2004 Roland Garros semi-finals. The Argentine then had a taste of life in the spotlight, as did his team, which was led by coach Franco Davín.

“More than 20 people, family and friends, were going to come and we had a discussion with Gastón. The idea was that nobody should come because that would take us out of the limelight,” Davín recalled in a conversation with ATPTour.com. “We thought it was important to maintain the peace and quiet he had been enjoying so that he felt confident before such an important match.”

Was his dream of playing in a Grand Slam final at his favourite tournament about to come true without his parents and brother and sister in the stands? Would none of the people who had always supported him be there as he bid for Argentina’s biggest tennis title in 25 years?

“For example, in terms of dinner, if everyone came then we’d have to reserve for more people and that could mean the food came out late or that we wouldn’t be able to eat where we wanted,” Davin said. “And those details, which can seem so small, distract you in matches as important as the one Gastón was about to play. It was better to maintain the same structure.”

They were already feeling overwhelmed with the amount of attention Gaudio had received since becoming Guillermo Coria’s opponent in the final of the tournament. Davín remembers a scrum of at least 50 journalists outside his accommodation, the Hotel California, waiting for the surprise Grand Slam final debutant.

Juan Carlos Ferrero perfectly remembers the first match between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. It was in 2019, in the first round of an ATP Challenger Tour event held at the Ferrero Tennis Academy in Alicante. The Spaniard’s 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 win against the Italian marked the beginning of a rivalry that will produce another thrilling chapter on Friday, when the stars cross swords in the Roland Garros semi-finals.

“At that time we knew he’d just won three Challenger tournaments and it looked like he was going to stand out quickly,” said Ferrero of Sinner on Thursday in Paris. “And that’s what he did. Carlos ended up winning, although he was still a work in progress. The day before, he played a junior final at the academy and then we tried in the Challenger. It was a very good first contact.”

That “first contact” led to what is now a thriving rivalry (4-4 in their Lexus ATP Head2Head) between two of the best players on the planet, two Grand Slam champions, and two world No. 1s (the Italian will climb to the top of the PIF ATP Rankings on Monday).

“I think Sinner will try and keep improving every day because he’s very young, as Carlos is, and they are both trying to get better every day,” said Ferrero. “There’s a strategy for tomorrow. Of course, if you don’t go out with a clear strategy against Sinner, if you don’t have a clear idea of how you’re going to play, there are always a lot of complications because you don’t know what to play.

“Just like Jannik knows how he has to play, Carlos also knows. The thing is that they’re both so good that they have great belief.”

Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner’s Lexus ATP Head2Head rivalry is about to embark on another chapter, with the Roland Garros clay providing the stage. The Spaniard will take on the Italian in the semi-finals of the Paris major on Friday in one of the most highly-anticipated matches of the season.

Both men have put their names alongside the Big Three of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic for the start to their careers at the majors. 

Alcaraz already has a US Open and a Wimbledon title under his belt, while Sinner’s trophy cabinet includes an Australian Open title. Their battle for a place in the Roland Garros final is further proof that they are contenders wherever their names appear on an entry list.

Their adaptation to the Grand Slams has been lightning-quick thanks to their innate ambition to excel on the sport’s biggest stages. Melbourne Park, The Bois de Boulogne, the All England Club and Flushing Meadows have all witnessed the rise of two versatile young stars who have adapted to each of the major’s particular conditions with aplomb.

Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori exacted Grand Slam revenge on Thursday to reach the championship match at Roland Garros.

The Italian pair downed second seeds Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Ebden 7-5, 2-6, 6-2 in a one-hour, 58-minute semi-final encounter on Court Simonne-Mathieu. The Italians converted four of nine break points they earned, according to Infosys Stats, to improve to 25-8 as a team in 2024.

Bolelli and Vavassori began their year together by reaching the final at the Australian Open, where it was Bopanna and Ebden who denied them their first major title together at Melbourne Park. The Indian-Australian pair also prevailed against Bolelli and Vavassori in March in Miami, but the Italians have since levelled the two teams’ Lexus ATP Head2Head series at 2-2 with triumphs on clay in Rome and now at Roland Garros.

Their victory on Thursday was a continuation of a huge tournament for Italian tennis: Jannik Sinner is into the semi-finals of the singles, having already ensured he will on Monday become the first player from his country to reach No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings. Jasmine Paolini is into the last four of the women’s singles, and has also partnered Sara Errani to the semi-finals of the women’s doubles.

The 11th-seeded Bolelli and Vavassori are are currently third in the PIF ATP Live Doubles Teams Rankings, but will rise to first if they can lift the title in Paris. Now into the final on their team debut at the clay-court major, they will take on top seeds Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos or ninth seeds Marcelo Arevalo and Mate Pavic in the final. Arevalo and Pavic on Thursday ended the run of Petros Tsitsipas and Stefanos Tsitsipas with a 7-5, 6-4 triumph.

Roland Garros semi-finalists are one win away from competing for a major trophy. Will it be Casper Ruud or Alexander Zverev who earns that opportunity in Friday's second semi-final?

The 25-year-old Ruud is chasing his third consecutive championship-match appearance in the French capital, where his recent deep runs have been based on his rock-solid baseline game and willingness to dig deep.

“The goal is not necessarily to play three perfect sets every time and win [in] straight sets, but sometimes you just have to think, ‘Okay, I won't play perfect, but I'm going to be a tough player to beat in best-of-five sets on clay’,” said Ruud after defeating Taylor Fritz in four sets in the fourth round. “That's the kind of mentality that has been working for me.

"I know if the opponents want to beat me, they're going to have to play really good tennis for at least three full sets, and I'm going to try to make it tough for them. Physically I'm going to try to be in good shape and make them suffer if I can. With my technical game I'm going to try to play heavy and play the kind of clay-court tennis that I like playing. It's been working well the last two, three years here.”

After a thrilling clay-court season, the stars of the ATP Tour move on to grass, beginning this week at the BOSS OPEN in Stuttgart and the Libema Open in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

Before each tournament week, ATPTour.com looks at three players who might be good selections for fans in the PIF ATP Rankings Predictor.

Make Your Picks Now!

Ben Shelton — defending 0 points
The American is one of the biggest servers on the ATP Tour — his game is made to wreak havoc on returners, especially on grass.

Shelton has only played five tour-level matches on grass in his young career (2-3). But like he showed this clay-court season, the lefty is a quick learner and will have an opportunity to make his mark on the surface in Stuttgart, where he is the second seed.

“A player’s development should never stop.”

Those are the words of Juan Carlos Ferrero, a former No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings, holder of 16 tour-level titles (including Roland Garros in 2003) and currently coach to Carlos Alcaraz, who will square off against Alexander Zverev in Sunday's the Roland Garros final.

“Even the best players in the world have that need to continue working and improving,” explained Ferrero, who watched from the stands Friday as Alcaraz fought off Jannik Sinner in a five-set semi-final. “Otherwise, the monotony and boredom would become too much and you wouldn’t be able to practise with the motivation required to improve.

“It’s true that you don’t have to be as on top of it as when you were 15, 16 or 17. Now he’s a player who’s achieving things and acquiring the necessary experience to realise when he’s failing at something and when he has to improve things… As you build that experience, you just know those things.”

The crowd LOVED that! @carlosalcaraz ?@rolandgarros | #RolandGarrospic.twitter.com/HHr4XeqVTj

Marcelo Arevalo and Mate Pavic won the Roland Garros men's doubles title on Saturday in just their second major as a team. The Salvadoran-Croatian duo defeated Italians Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori 7-5, 6-3 in the final after knocking out top seeds Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos in Friday's semis.

The 30-year-old Pavic completed the Golden Slam — winning all four majors along with Olympic gold — with the triumph. Pavic joines Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut as the only active men's players to win all four doubles Grand Slams.

"It feels special," the Croatian said during an emotional trophy speech. "I want to say a special thanks to Marcelo for bringing me here to the top. He knows how it's done, a few years ago he won it. First time [at Roland Garros] obviously, so I feel very happy."

Too sweet ?

What a win, what a moment ?@rolandgarros | #RolandGarros pic.twitter.com/GEBPsGXsNR

Arevalo, 33, won his lone previous major crown two years ago in Paris alongside Jean-Julien Rojer.

The first thing Carlos Alcaraz did when leaving the court after more than four hours of tennis was spend 20 minutes on an exercise bike to start his recovery. The second, of course, was to look at his telephone and find mountains of messages congratulating him on his win against Jannik Sinner to progress to his first final at Roland Garros, and his third in a Grand Slam tournament.

When he stopped pedalling, the No. 3 player in the PIF ATP Rankings spent some time switching between cold and hot baths before finally eating something to continue to reset his body after his demanding encounter with the Italian, whom he now leads 5-4 in their Lexus ATP Head2Head series.

Alcaraz then appeared in the press conference room to answer journalists’ questions for almost half an hour, before doing TV interviews and heading to his hotel to rest and start thinking about the last step ahead of him.

“It was a very tough match, but I’m very happy to have come through it and to have learned from the situations I’ve faced so far,” the 21-year-old said. “They’re moments in which I didn’t do well mentally and they took their toll... Today, I changed that. I was positive all the time, I was strong mentally and I didn’t get down at any point. To me, I’m proud to know that I’m not making the same mistakes twice.”

Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev have made a habit of meeting on the game's biggest stages, but never has more been on the line than in Sunday's Roland Garros final. The pair has contested nine previous Lexus ATP Head2Head meetings, with each of the past seven at either a Grand Slam, an ATP Masters 1000 or the Nitto ATP Finals.

The fourth-seeded Zverev is the underdog in the Paris final, but he leads the series 5-4, including recent wins last season in Turin and this year at the Australian Open. Alcaraz has won two of their three clay meetings, winning twice in Madrid but losing in the 2022 Roland Garros quarter-finals.

"We had very tough battles in the past," Zverev said of the third-seeded Spaniard. "It's going to be a difficult match. It is a Grand Slam final. If you're in a Grand Slam final, you deserve to be there. That goes for both of us. I think both of is are expecting a tough battle."

While both players will be competing in their first Roland Garros title match, both can draw upon a wealth of big-match experience. Alcaraz is 2-0 in major finals (2022 US Open, 2023 Wimbledon) and 5-1 in ATP Masters 1000 finals. Zverev, an Olympic gold medalist, is 2-0 in title matches at the Nitto ATP Finals (2018, 2021) and 6-5 in finals at the Masters 1000s — including a triumph in Rome last month.

Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev will meet on Sunday in the Roland Garros final.

Alcaraz is a two-time major champion, having triumphed at the US Open in 2022 and Wimbledon in 2023. Zverev is a two-time Nitto ATP Finals titlist pursuing his maiden Slam trophy.

Who will lift the Coupe des Mousquetaires on Court Philippe-Chatrier? Make your selection below!