When You're Carlos Alcaraz, You Don't Even Need To Bother Knowing Who You'll Play In The Quarterfinals. It's Just A Formality
Imagine spending your entire life to become one of the greatest tennis players on the planet. You train and train and train some more. You manage to become a top 15 ATP ranked player. There are over 100 million people in the world who play tennis, and you are in the top 15. You are in the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1%.
And you still don't present even the faintest threat to Carlos Alcaraz.
Ben Shelton, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Daniil Medvedev, Frances Tiafoe. It doesn't matter. These guys could walk onto pretty much any court and be the best tennis player out there. But unless you're on the complete other side of the bracket from Carlos Alcaraz, he doesn't care. There are maybe 2 other names he really needs to look out for when he's checking out his draw, and those are the two he could possibly end up facing in the final. He's not going to sit there and actually map out his path through the quarterfinals. That's for guys like Andy Roddick to do for him.
And for what it's worth, he'll have Ben Shelton waiting for him on the other side. Do you believe in Miracles?