The Russian star unexpectedly spoke openly about his thoughts on Carlos Alcaraz.

“Later, I began to warm up to Alcaraz… but honestly, not at first. I didn’t really like his behavior initially because it seemed somewhat insincere. He was always smiling, constantly smiling. I wondered to myself: ‘How can that be possible?’

I compared it to myself. I tend to be very dramatic during matches, whereas he is the opposite, always cheerful, even when talking to his team. I thought, ‘How can that be? He’s smiling all the time, nonstop, way too much!’” Pavlyuchenkova shared.

Carlos Alcaraz recently lost the world No. 1 ranking to Jannik Sinner. Prior to that, he was shockingly defeated by world No. 35 Cameron Norrie at the 2025 Paris Masters, played on one of the slowest courts of the season.

The English player beat Alcaraz 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, advancing to the third round and ending Alcaraz’s 17-match winning streak in the Masters 1000 series.

In this match, Alcaraz struggled to adapt to the court surface, committing 54 unforced errors and even arguing with coach Juan Carlos Ferrero in the coaching area.

After the match, the 21-year-old Spaniard admitted he chose the wrong strategy for the slow court conditions, a factor many experts believe makes it difficult for lower-ranked players to surprise the top two players in the world.

“I picked the wrong game plan for this type of surface,” Alcaraz said after the match. “Things didn’t go as planned. This was one of my worst matches of the year in terms of how I felt playing. In Miami, it was a fitness issue, but this time it was different. I couldn’t feel the ball well throughout the match.”

When asked why he couldn’t adjust to the slow surface in Paris, Alcaraz just shook his head: “I’m not sure. I trained a lot here, felt good, moved well, and controlled the ball fine. Everything in my mind was clear, including my goals. But today, even in the first set — although I won — I felt I could have played much better. In the second set, I tried to improve, but the opposite happened: I played even worse.”

Interestingly, before the tournament began, Alcaraz acknowledged that the court speed at the Paris Masters this year was slower than last year due to the change in venue, but he saw it as a positive: “The court speed is much slower this year, but I think it’s a good speed for the audience to see real rallies, not just serves and one-shot points. I like this kind of court, a bit slower, not too fast,” Alcaraz said at that time.