Why has Carlos Alcaraz hit a wall? Jannik Sinner's absence, lack of motivation & other possible reasons explored

Carlos Alcaraz hasn’t had the best Sunshine Double, and it begs the question of whether the Spaniard has truly hit a wall. Spelled out that crudely, it makes it seem rather silly—Alcaraz hitting a wall—but in reality, it does certainly feel that way.

He has been utterly dominant at the Indian Wells Masters for much of his career, winning the event in 2023 and 2024. Then comes 2025, and the Spaniard not only doesn’t win the event, but he also fails to make the final, losing against eventual champion Jack Draper. Sure, losses do happen, and it’s part of tennis, but this felt different.

It felt different because up until that match, the Spaniard was seemingly playing pretty solid tennis. He looked well on his way to making another final and then bang—all of a sudden, that didn’t happen. After that event turned out that way, people assumed that Alcaraz would bounce back in a major fashion at the Miami Masters because, after all, that is an event he has also won in the past.

It’s not as tailor-made of a court as Indian Wells is, but the conditions do tend to play much like he likes them to. And then the unthinkable happened—he was beaten in his first match by none other than David Goffin. While Goffin is certainly a capable player, even this much removed from his best days, he came into this event with a 4-8 record overall—so not exactly world-beating stuff.

The eye test didn’t really show anything spectacular either, so nobody really imagined that Goffin could do anything against Alcaraz. So what happened? What happened is that Alcaraz threw away the match. He won the opening set 7-5, which was harder than imagined, but then totally imploded in the next two, losing both of them to crash out.

It largely happened because he couldn’t channel his aggressive approach well, finishing with 42 unforced errors to 36 winners. He actually achieved something remarkable by splitting the 42 errors equally across three sets, having 14 in each of those. So what does all of this tell us?

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What is going on with Carlos Alcaraz?

Miami Open Presented by Itau 2025 - Day 4 - Source: Getty

Ah, this is the money question, and it’s a very good question, because what indeed is going on with Carlos Alcaraz? Well, he’s not playing well, at least comparatively to what is known he can put out there in terms of level and product. There seems to be something going on with Alcaraz that he’s not really showing because in the interview with Spanish media, the media kept asking him if everything was okay, and he just brushed it off.

It was a very weird moment because nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Alcaraz even said that he felt nervous as he normally does before every match, but nothing spectacular. He also then said that he knows this upcoming part of the season well and that he’ll be fine.

He might be, or he might not be. Time will tell, but let’s briefly assess what might be going on. Jannik Sinner is not playing right now, which means that essentially Alcaraz should dominate the Tour. Novak Djokovic has been struggling with an injury, while Alexander Zverev has been out of form.

And here comes Alcaraz, struggling as well. Could it be that he’s lacking motivation? It seems strange to say because this is a highly self-motivated individual, but there seems to be a lack of urgency. You’d think he would push hard to possibly overtake Sinner as the top ranked player, which is a stated goal of his, but he’s not really doing that. He’s kind of just performing in a way very atypical of Alcaraz.

Maybe if Sinner was playing, he would actually feel the urgency; maybe he would rise up to the challenge of the Italian. But now that he’s away, maybe Alcaraz is just kind of taking it slow as he’s not really feeling any pressure. Who knows? It’s tough to say, but the way he has struggled isn’t that atypical. We’ve seen bad stretches from him like this in the past, but there isn’t a clear reason as to why they happened.

Clay coming up should allow the Spaniard to tap into some of the more natural sides of his tennis. It’s a surface he loves, and he’ll have Barcelona and Madrid—so playing on home soil—which should boost him up as well. A couple of good wins, a trophy perhaps, should set him back straight because this—what we’ve seen recently from him—hasn’t been very good or Alcaraz-esque at all.