pa href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/carlos-alcaraz/a0e2/overview'Carlos Alcaraz/a and a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/rafael-nadal/n409/overview'Rafael Nadal/a made a roaring start to their much-anticipated doubles debut Saturday at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where the Spanish duo ousted sixth-seeded Argentines a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/maximo-gonzalez/g585/overview'Maximo Gonzalez/a and a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/andres-molteni/me56/overview'Andres Molteni/a 7-6(4), 6-4 to reach the second round./p
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Alcaraz, who began the day with a singles victory in his Olympics debut, made a nervy start, dropping serve in the opening game and needing to fend off two break points in his second service game. But it was the more experienced 38-year-old Nadal, in his fourth Olympics appearance, who helped settle the team with banana-curling forehand winners and lightning-fast reflexes at net./p
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Both wearing Spanish red shirts and white shorts, Alcaraz and Nadal resorted to a lsquo;two backrsquo; strategy on return, with the lefty Nadal returning on the deuce side. Alcaraz and Nadal then looked for early opportunities to use angles and work their way forward to seize control of rallies. They gained a mini-break advantage at 3/3 in the opening-set tie-break, when Alcaraz blasted a forehand that clipped the net cord and deflected off Gonzalezrsquo;s racquet frame./p
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Alcaraz and Nadal trailed 0-3 in the second set, before tallying three consecutive games and building upon their momentum, earning a crucial break at 4-4. The 92-time tour-level titlist Nadal then served out the match, accompanied by fans chanting, "Rafa! Rafa!" under the Court-a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/philippe-chatrier/ci59/overview'Philippe Chatrier/a roof./p
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Nadal, a two-time gold medallist (2008 Beijing singles, 2016 Rio doubles w/ a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/marc-lopez/l480/overview'Marc Lopez/a), played the entirety of the one-hour, 47-minute match with his upper right leg taped, but the lefty showed no signs of hindered movement./p
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Up next for the pair of former World No. 1's in the PIF ATP Rankings are Dutchmen a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/tallon-griekspoor/gj37/overview'Tallon Griekspoor/a and a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/wesley-koolhof/kc41/overview'Wesley Koolhof/a or Hungarians a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/marton-fucsovics/f724/overview'Marton Fucsovics/a and a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/fabian-marozsan/m0ci/overview'Fabian Marozsan/a. Fucsovics is Nadalrsquo;s first-round singles opponent./pblockquote class="twitter-tweet"p lang="en" dir="ltr"What do we say in unison?! ????????a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Paris2024?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#Paris2024/a a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/tennis?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#tennis/a a href="https://t.co/P9JmRe9Ku6"pic.twitter.com/P9JmRe9Ku6/a/pmdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1817275237337067619?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"July 27, 2024/a/blockquote script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script
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