In his first-round match on Centre Court against Italian veteran Fabio Fognini, Carlos Alcaraz managed to recover from a significant early scare in his quest to win a hat-trick of championships at Wimbledon, as he was able to prevail in the decisive set of a five-set thriller. Alcaraz was uncharacteristically careless and carefree despite winning the Queens Club tournament and being fresh off the French Open, which drew a lot of flak from all quarters.

Former British world number one and Wimbledon semifinalist Tim Henman criticized the 2023 and 2024 winner. On BBC One, Henman minced no words in his evaluation of Alcaraz's subpar performance, which saw him lose sets two and four and be pulled into a protracted match.

"I'm astonished by both the shoddy performance and his responses." I can't believe he's missing the shots he's missing. It is undoubtedly a worry for his coaching staff. He has been rather reckless. Henman stated, "He has set up points and, time and time again, committed unforced mistakes."

Alcaraz unusually made more unforced mistakes than winners, which is uncommon for a player who can typically display his strength without missing too many groundstrokes. Alcaraz committed 62 unforced errors throughout five sets.

He keeps making things harder for himself. "It has been a really odd performance from Alcaraz, he's simply making some simple misses here," a perplexed Henman remarked. "I don't think I've ever seen him so out of sorts." It was never supposed to happen in this manner. Carlos Alcaraz has never seemed this disoriented in front of such a large audience.

In the end, Fognini, who is 38 years old and on his farewell tour with retirement scheduled for later this season, simply didn't have enough in the tank to compete with Alcaraz, who had not won at the tour level since October 2024 coming into this contest. Despite winning the deciding set 6-2, Alcaraz still needed a few breaks in the last set to break the Italian's momentum.

Alcaraz's inability to consistently land his first serve had an impact on him in this match, according to Henman, who noted that his percentage of successful first serves was only 58%, which is far below the bar that is set for him.

Carlos has set the bar for his performances so high because his form has been absolutely sensational. However, he has a low percentage of first serves in this match. Fabio Fognini has had a lot of opportunity to go after the second serve since it has been about 50%," he stated.

Alcaraz is fortunate to have time to acclimate to the Wimbledon grass since he will face a very easy second round opponent in British qualifier Oliver Tarvet, who is ranked outside the top 700 in the ATP rankings.

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