When Carlos Alcaraz won his first Grand Slam tournament, the 2022 US Open, there were 20,000 spectators inside the stadium. This, Alcaraz has noted, is roughly the same as the population of El Palmar, the Spanish village in which he grew up. With annual earnings of over $30 million, Alcaraz could afford to live anywhere in the world he wanted. Yet he still lives in El Palmar.

It’s one of many endearing things about tennis’s new superstar, right. As the subtitle of this biography – The Man Behind The Smile – implies, Alcaraz’s approach is to enjoy his success, rather than letting it go to his head. He owns a small apartment in El Palmar but still prefers to sleep at his family’s modest home.

Even his accent has stayed authentic. It is ‘coarse… maybe even comic’, writes Mark Hodgkinson. His racquet bag on court contains cards (given to him by his grandmother) showing la Virgen de la Fuensanta, the patron saint of Murcia, his area of Spain.

Unlike some players, he knows he’s there to entertain. The smile stays in place even after he loses a point. When he wins one, he’ll sometimes put a finger to his ear, to encourage the crowd’s cheers. Former player Andy Roddick jokes that the smile is ‘very offensive to people like me, who played in a kind of miserable, stressed-out state most of the time. But it’s fun to watch… Who doesn’t love this kid?’

Photographers love him too, as they’re guaranteed great pictures, such as backhand returns played with both feet off the ground, or ‘tweeners’, where Alcaraz hits the ball through his legs with his back turned.

He’s also famous for wrong-footing opponents with drop shots, hitting the ball so softly that it only just makes it over the net. In one exhibition match he even returned a serve with a drop shot. The ball had so much spin on it that it landed on the other side of the net then bounced back on to Alcaraz’s side.

Of course you don’t become the youngest world number one in history (aged 19) just by smiling. Now 22, he has worked incredibly hard at his game since childhood. An early coach got him to improve his backhand by playing the shot with a baseball bat. A willing pupil, he always wanted to stay on court for another 20 minutes, then another 20 and so on. His technique was perfect by the age of six.

But would he be tall and strong enough to make the grade as a professional? He couldn’t do anything about his height (which eventually reached an adequate six feet) but strength was something he could control. 

He still loves to watch the training sequences from the Rocky films, because it reminds him of the work he put in at the age of 15, when a coach nicknamed him ‘Little Noodle’ because he was so skinny. He gets himself motivated for matches by listening to Eye Of The Tiger, the hit song from Rocky III.

The coach in question was Juan Carlos Ferrero, who had himself been world number one. Alcaraz has stuck with Ferrero to this day, unlike other players – such as Britain’s Emma Raducanu – who have ditched their backroom teams after early success.

You might have expected that Alcaraz’s father (also called Carlos) would coach his son: he too had been a professional, peaking at 963 in the world. But it wasn’t rankings that gave Ferrero the nod, it was Alcaraz senior’s awareness that fathers don’t always make the best coaches. He’d seen it ruin relationships and careers on the tennis circuit before.

Will Alcaraz go on to be the greatest player ever? Only time will tell. For now he’s keeping it humble, aided by his family. His father wasn’t overly happy when Alcaraz bought him an Aston Martin as a present, considering it too flash.

Meanwhile the children at Alcaraz’s old primary school no longer have to suffer the sound of their chairs scraping across the floor. The player donated 1,800 used tennis balls to protect the chairs’ feet.