India, Feb. 2 -- Seated between the shining Australian Open trophy he's had to wait to lay his hands on and a glass of sparkling champagne waiting to be finished, Carlos Alcaraz let out a big laugh.

"I'm trying, I'm trying," he said, when asked whether he could fully grasp the magnitude of what he had achieved at his age.

Tennis for him is "beautiful", but the "bad part" also is that its packed calendar doesn't allow the time for those who play it to fully realise what they've been able to do sometimes.

For now, Alcaraz gets the gist: "I know I'm doing history."

Sure, but it's history with staggeringly swift steps. It's history that, in the cold world of numbers, puts to shade even the sport-altering records of the Big Three.

Those t...