I return to the subject of Carlos Alcaraz, the Spanish tennis player. His surname was a previous Word of the Week, back in June 2024 when he became the first player to win his first three Grand Slam tournaments on different surfaces: The US Open (hard court) in 2022 , Wimbledon (grass) in 2023 and the French Open (clay).

Yesterday Alcaraz became the youngest man to win the career Grand Slam. He beat Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open final, in four sets. I listened to part of the match on BBC Radio. As noted more than once on this site I cancelled my TV sports subscriptions last summer. I speculated, here, about whether I might crack and start subscribing again once the football season started. So far I have not, and am following most sports on radio and with live updates on the web. Djokovic served “to stay in the match”, as they say, at 4-5 in the fourth set. He won his service game and at that point I switched off. I was too tense. I feared that the game might go to a tie-break and then a fifth set. I watched the end of Saturday night’s edition of “The 1% Club” instead, had a shower, and checked my phone about 30 minutes later. Alcaraz had won that fourth set, without too much fuss by the look of it.

There is a simple way to rationalize any sports event that you do not follow in real time, where you care about the outcome: if the match is won by the person or team that you are following you’ll be happy when they win, whether or not you are watching. If they lose, you don’t need to waste your time watching it happen. That doesn’t stop me following many sporting events live, but I adopt this view with games taking place at unsociable hours. The most memorable example, for me, was the US Open Final of 2012. Andy Murray beat Novak Djokovic to win his first major title. The game lasted nearly five hours, well past midnight here in the UK. I had an early start the next day and was in bed by 11pm. When I woke up to find that Murray had won I was happy with the news. I did not regret sleeping through it. I still don’t.

I did not follow Alcaraz’s semi-final victory in Melbourne last week either. At 5 hours 27 minutes it was the longest semi-final in the tournament’s history. I read about it after the event, on the BBC website, here.

Tucked away there, with a time stamp of 09:23 on 30 January, are these words from Jonathan Jurejko (BBC Sport tennis news reporter in Melbourne):

“Cabeza, corazón y cojones.

Carlos Alcaraz shows everything which his grandfather preached to him.

Head, heart and… courage, shall we say.

Alcaraz prods his chest to indicate this victory came from the heart.

We’ve seen some extraordinary things from this 22-year-old kid from Murcia already in his career – and here’s another one.”

As you can see, he paraphrases the word “cojones” as “courage”. As you probably know, it’s Spanish for balls (as in bollocks). I have been aware of the word since my first trip to Spain, aged 18. Regular visitors to this site will know that my brother has been based in Spain for over 40 years. He works in Murcia (Alcaraz’s home town), and has spent time in recent decades teaching English. As far as I am aware, he has never taught any member of the Alcaraz family but every time we hear Carlos give a speech at the end of a match my son and I joke that he’s going to thank my brother personally for being his teacher. Often, when I hear the word “cojones”, I recall my brother’s daughter, aged three or four, repeatedly shouting the word with a big smile on her face. We tried to keep a straight face, telling her that it’s not a good word for a child to use, but we couldn’t manage it for long. The memory of it makes me smile now, over 30 years later.

I wonder if the English expression “the dog’s bollocks”, indicating excellence, has made it into Spanish. If so, it would translate as “los cojones del perro”, and would be a good way to describe just how good a tennis player Alcaraz is.