Carlos Alcaraz and the Long Haul

Hidden Quest: Can Gen Z Handle the Grind?

Second Serve | Weekly Column

This is a review — of sorts — of the first episode of Netflix’s My Way on Carlos Alcaraz.

I’ll be coming back to the later episodes as the story unfolds.

A taped wrist, a heavy pack, and a sip from the elders’ flask — the real road to greatness.

The opening episode of My Way — Netflix’s new documentary on Carlos Alcaraz — is titled “Finding Joy in the Pain.”

A neat phrase. Almost suspiciously neat.

The episode follows Alcaraz’s 2024 season: from his triumph at Indian Wells, to a forearm injury that cracked his armour, to the long, grinding comeback that ends — gloriously, inevitably — with a French Open trophy.

On the surface, it’s a familiar hero arc.

Win. Fall. Rise. Cue music.

But what caught my attention — and what Netflix, to its credit, doesn’t completely sand down — is the peculiar, brutal reality of tennis:

You don’t just heal your body. You have to rewire your mind.

My Way manages to go deeper than most tennis documentaries, showing that greatness isn’t born from talent alone but from long, bruising stretches of effort and determination.

Even if — predictably — Ferrero and agent Antonio Molina end up cast as the villains: the mentors who insist on resilience in a generation that often sees hardness as missing the point.

Injuries in tennis aren’t like injuries in other sports.

In basketball or football, you can pass the ball, call a timeout, get a substitute to come in.

In tennis, you miss a shot, shake the pain out of your wrist, and 30 seconds later you’re serving again — alone, exposed, thinking too much, thinking too little.

One mental wobble becomes five.

Five missed points become a lost set.

One bad match becomes a narrative you can’t quite shake.

You’re resetting, mentally, every few seconds — or you’re not resetting at all.

My Way doesn’t get clinical about it, but you feel it.

You feel it in the moments where Alcaraz, usually sunshine in human form, looks off.

Distrustful of his own body. Wary of swinging freely.

You feel it, too, in Juan Carlos Ferrero’s voice — that slight crack of exasperation when he says of lack of ambition:

“I’m not sure I will be here all the time.”

Ferrero isn’t furious. He isn’t abandoning his student.

But there’s a generational ache underneath: a frustration at the slower urgency, the softer edges of a Gen Z mind navigating pain.

Is he seeing a lack of fire? Or is he gently pushing Alcaraz to find it for himself?

Watching this, I couldn’t help but think about my own child — part of this same generation.

A generation raised, perhaps, with a little too much comfort.

Where short-term happiness often wins out over the slow, uncomfortable business of real achievement.

Where resilience isn’t always demanded — cushioned too quickly, falling too softly.

Maybe it’s our fault.

Maybe it’s progress.

Maybe it’s both.

But seeing Alcaraz grind through his injury — no shortcuts, no guarantees, just the daily, silent work of rebuilding — reminded me:

Comfort is easy. Endurance is an education.

And like him, they too will be tested — quietly, painfully, inevitably — by a world that is growing harsher, not softer.

A world where resilience and hardness will not just be virtues.

They will be necessities.

But resilience doesn’t emerge on its own.

It needs to be built — often with guidance that feels harsh before it feels helpful.

The challenge for this generation is not just enduring the tests, but accepting the mentors who dare to impose them.

Alcaraz hasn’t mastered that patience yet.

But he isn’t learning alone.

The apprenticeship with Juan Carlos Ferrero — that long, quiet education in how to build a game, and a mind — remains crucial.

(You can dive deeper into that hidden side of greatness in The Apprenticeship of Carlos Alcaraz.)

(In that earlier piece, we explored how Ferrero didn’t just coach Alcaraz technically — he modeled how resilience, doubt, and growth must coexist. A true apprenticeship of mind as much as forehand.)

Of course, apprenticeships don’t last forever.

In the end, every young champion must find a way to “kill the father” — to take what the mentor gave, break it open, and make it their own.

My Way isn’t capturing a Gen Z revolution.

It’s showing Gen Z’s first real collision with life’s oldest truths:

• That mental health isn’t a luxury; it’s a daily practice of endurance.

• That injury isn’t an identity crisis; it’s a rehearsal for the countless setbacks life delivers.

• That winning isn’t domination; it’s constant, grinding adaptation.

It’s not always glamorous, and it doesn’t always fit the Netflix beat drop.

There are long stretches where healing looks less like heroic training montages and more like a 21-year-old trying to trust a forehand again.

But that’s the truth about tennis — and the truth about growing up in any era.

You break.

You rebuild.

You doubt.

You try again.

Alcaraz’s story isn’t just a celebration of talent.

It’s a discrete meditation on durability: physical, emotional, psychological.

And in a generation often accused of impatience, that long patience might turn out to be its sharpest weapon.

Pain, it turns out, isn’t just a hurdle on the road to greatness.

Sometimes, it’s the road itself.

Which is why the oldest wisdom still feels the freshest.

Marcus Aurelius said it simply:

“What stands in the way becomes the way.”

(Or as Ryan Holiday put it: “The Obstacle is the Way.”)

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From the series:

My Way — The Apprenticeship of Carlos Alcaraz

Tracking not just the victories, but the vulnerabilities that shape them. New episodes soon.