“I was playing against the opponent, and I was playing against myself, you know, in my mind,” explained Alcaraz at the time. “I mean, a lot of emotions that I couldn’t control.”
The young Spaniard was coming off a wildly successful summer, winning back-to-back major titles at Roland Garros and Wimbledon before winning a silver medal at the Paris Olympic Games.
Alcaraz has looked far stronger to start the 2025 season, enduring a narrow loss to Djokovic in Melbourne after a solid run to the last eight. Playing in Rotterdam for the first time, he found himself on the back foot early on against van de Zandschulp, who is ranked No. 84 after earning a career-high of No. 22 in 2022.
The top-seeded Alcaraz nonetheless turned around a 3-5 deficit in the opening set to edge it out in a tiebreaker, and recovered well after losing the second set with two breaks of serve to close out the win in just over two and a half hours.
Up next for Alcaraz will be either Andrea Vavassori or Félix Auger-Aliassime, who is coming off a title run in Montpellier only last week.
