Carlos Alcaraz cannot play this year’s Mutua Madrid Open due to injury, but he has made a striking confession on the tournament’s official podcast. When asked about his big goal for 2026 beyond tennis, golf tops his list of aims. “I’ve set myself a personal goal for the end of the year: to try to be a 5 handicap in golf”, he explains. Right now, he says, he is at “about 12”, so the challenge is not small.
It’s clear golf has truly hooked him and he himself explains why. To start with, he gives a very basic, very direct, but also very real reason for someone who pushes his body to the limit: “First of all, that it isn’t injurious”. From there, he goes into what really captivates him.
“The atmosphere surrounding golf, for me, that’s the main thing”, he says. And he develops it very clearly: “How beautiful it is, it’s surrounded by nature, and in a way no one bothers you, you’re focused on yourself”. There lies one of the keys. Golf as a refuge. As a space where he can turn down the noise that follows him all year.
However, the crux is this last point: “Tennis players are very competitive”, and that is why he believes golf fits them so well. “Golf makes you compete mainly against yourself, against yourself and against the course. I’ll see if I can beat my record for fewest strokes, I’ll see if I can lower my handicap. So that’s like a rolling ball, and as you see yourself improving, the more it gets you hooked”. With this simple act, Carlos Alcaraz sums up the reason for the addiction to this sport.
In fact, when he talks about golf, Alcaraz makes it clear he is crazy about the sport: “Whenever I can play golf, I play” and he explains very well why golf helps him switch off. The reason isn’t that he doesn’t think, but that he thinks only about that. “Since golf requires so much concentration on every shot”, he says, his mind stays inside the game. He can be with his friends, laughing and chatting, but in reality he’s already into the next shot. “You start thinking about the next shot… I’m going to take this club”, he says. And he sums it up very graphically: “My head is already working out how to do it as best as possible”. That’s why he says that during a round he doesn’t think about anything else. He even admits that sometimes he’s left something pending and completely forgotten it because he was so focused on the course.
Behind the goal of getting down to a 5 handicap there’s also a little rivalry with a real name attached: Andy Murray. Alcaraz admits quite naturally that, for now, the Scot is ahead. “If we play one-on-one, just us, he smokes me”, he admits. No excuses.
They’ve played twice and each has won once, but there’s a catch. It was a match in London, in pairs, and in a fourballs format: “Once they beat us and once we beat them”, he explains. In a straight one-on-one he doesn’t bluff: “We weren’t competing on even terms because I still don’t have the level”.
That said, the competitor reappears. “I’ll catch up with him and beat him”, he says with a laugh about Murray. When asked if that 5 handicap would get him closer to Andy, he replies clearly: “With that target I can already compete with Andy, more or less”.
Alcaraz, one of the great stars of world sport, has a very specific goal away from tennis: to improve his golf, get down to a handicap of 5 and one day face Murray with better credentials. In the meantime, he continues to enjoy a sport that gives him exactly what he is looking for: nature, calm, concentration and a constant fight against himself.
