CNN
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If an 18th birthday is supposed to be a momentous, coming-of-age occasion, then Carlos Alcaraz got the memo. In front of a home crowd in Madrid, the then-up-and-coming tennis star braced himself to face one of the game’s great players for the first time.
Alcaraz had spent his whole childhood idolizing Rafael Nadal. To face the legendary Spaniard on his favored clay surface produced a cocktail of emotions: excitement, exhilaration, but also deep-seated terror.
“I was so scared,” Alcaraz has since said about that moment. “I couldn’t play. His presence, the atmosphere that you feel – it’s unbelievable.”
For Nadal’s camp,…
