A month prior to Frank Sinatra’s death in May of 1998, the terrific essayist Sarah Vowell recorded a This American Life piece pleading with television anchorfolk—both high- and lowbrow—to refrain from doing the thing they were 100 percent going to do when announcing his death. Vowell lamented that each and every obit treatment would be “accompanied by the same damn song, the most obvious, unsubtle, disconcertingly dictatorial chestnut in the old man’s vast and dazzling backlog…‘My Way.’” She was dead-on, it played on every network news account, and she’s right about the song itself. The charms of Ol’ Blue Eyes’ ridiculous full-throated sentimental pomposity are not lost on me, but I recognize it’s the most “Fat Elvis” song—both figuratively and literally—in his entire catalog. The one thing the song does have going for it, though, is a sense of gravitas from one of the greatest to ever do it. “My Way” became his personal anthem (a thing he regretted as daughter Tina said he came to hate the “self-serving and self-indulgent” ditty) to such a degree that it’s become nostalgic lingua franca for elderly people on their way out who want to believe they lived a full uncompromised life. Even though they assuredly did not.

Whenever someone says they “did it my way,” Sinatra’s slow, shallow warbling instantly starts playing in my head. So it was rather unnerving to see it used in context with a 21-year-old tennis star whose life is really just starting to unspool, but it’s the title of Carlos Alcaraz: My Way, a Netflix docuseries debuting today. It may seem like a stretch to link the two, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if the young Spaniard isn’t aware of Sintara himself, let alone his signature song, but it’s such an end-of-the-journey expression that it begged questions of youth before I even watched it. Namely, how can a kid claim to be doing things “my way” before most of his adult life is yet to come? And furthermore, has Carlitos led enough of a life to warrant a three-part treatment? I’d come to find the scenes that loom largest on this front are when the wise old owls Agassi, Borg, McEnroe, and Navratilova take stock of Alacaraz’s long-game potential, the lines on their faces and the silver in their hair (minus the former mullet man) showing that their years are moving in Sinatra’s direction.

The series is a straightforward, behind-the-scenes look at Alcaraz’s 2024 season. It features the highs of wins at the French and Wimbledon, and the lows of bowing out of the Olympic doubles quarterfinals in Rafael Nadal’s last go-round and a huge meltdown and an all-timer four-bang racquet-obliterating smash (rendered in brilliant slo-mo, the production quality on My Way is superb) in a loss to Gael Monfils at the Cincinnati Open. All in all, a good year for the world’s current No. 3, who is hoping his right leg issues in Barcelona didn’t ruin a potential 22nd Madrid Open finals birthday celebration in front of a raucous home crowd in a couple weeks. If so, his family will have to triple the size of the “tennis court ringed with white balls” cake he was presented on his 21st birthday, one of the charming moments of the series. Alcaraz’s million-watt smile, ebullient personality, and clear love of busting cojones with his boys—a big-time athlete in constant fits of laughter is a sight in itself—make the series an overall entertaining watch, but the first episode was lacking in actual drama and a sense of purpose. Since we know he won Indian Wells in 2024, the storyline of him overcoming multiple 2023 injuries doesn’t have enough juice to really justify My Way’s existence beyond a solid Carlitos hang. That and, presumably, keeping the relationship between streamer and subject happy for further Netflix Slam exhibitions and the forthcoming Rafael Nadal series.

Speaking of Nadal, My Way finds its footing and takes off in the second and third episodes when Rafa enters the picture by making fun of Alcaraz for liking too many Majorcan girls’ Instagram photos. In the interview sections of the series, Alcaraz only gets heated once, and it’s in talking about how he has no desire “to be the heir to the Spanish throne,” and how it’s both irrelevant and insulting to Nadal to mention them in the same way just because he and Rafa both won three majors by age 21. He also lets a deep well of teary on-court emotion out after losing in the Olympic singles finals to Novak Djokivic, but what really seems to be breaking Carlito’s heart is knowing he had one shot to medal with his idol and it didn’t happen. The Alcaraz-Nadal doubles experiment flamed out in the quarterfinals, and for the first time, the young gun witnessed an Olympic tennis dream come to an end, one that can never be captured again. It’s probably the first time Carlitos came face-to-face with the realization that the fun is fleeting and nothing, notably athletic careers, lasts forever.

Fun, however, is what Alcaraz is currently after, and the very piece of advice Roger Federer gives him, upon their first real chat, is to find it elsewhere at every tournament and in-between stretch. (For Nadal, we learn it means pre-match Parcheesi.) Carlos eats it up, exclaiming to an assembled practice crowd after Fed leaves that he has “gotten some of the magic” on his arms from their warm embrace. Fun is also why he ignores the advice of his team and his pill of an agent—a whinger who wants sympathy for being away from his family every year on his birthday at Wimbledon, which somehow his teenage kids can’t get to even though a Barcelona–London flight is two and a half hours—and goes to Ibiza for a nonstop week of partying after the 2023 French Open semis loss to Novak. It’s seen by Team Alcaraz as the immature act of someone who isn’t properly training for grass season. Then he won Wimbledon, so he did it again in 2024. Same results. Fiesta on, amigo.

The trips weren’t simply a dude blowing off steam, either; they were part of Alcaraz’s astute understanding of what he needs mentally in order to never “see tennis as an obligation.” What he is trying to figure out is how to do it his way, to lay down a road map that doesn’t break him on the journey to “sit at the table with the Big Three.” There is already an insane amount of pressure and expectation that 20 majors are a sure thing, but in true Gen-Z fashion, he doesn’t seem as obsessed with it as everyone in his orbit. Other than his mother, of course, who has the best line in the show when she says, “I don’t want my son to turn into a worn-out toy later on.”

Neither does Carlos Alcaraz, because he admits that right now, he doesn’t know if he wants to become a “slave to the game,” a dismal idea that his coach, the unsmiling Juan Carlos Ferrero, posits multiple times throughout the series. Alacaraz isn’t having all of it; he’s determined to not hate a sport he loves or live a life he doesn’t want. Given the crash-and-burning of so many young stars over the years, it’s admirable and feels very Gen-Z for a man his age to put such stock in self-care. Is part of it playing to the cameras? Probably, but Alcaraz is so likable in My Way, I swallowed it whole. I’m already on record here hoping he knocks Novak out of the top spot in 2040 give or take, but Carlitos won me over even more with his refreshing approach to his crazy, high-profile, jet-set existence. It’s best encapsulated in Alcaraz’s big-picture “how” he’ll know if his tennis career is on point: “I’ll choose happiness over massive success, because happiness is already success…”

Come to think of it, that reminds me of something a certain crooner facing that final curtain once asked and answered: “What is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught…”