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Guess who’s back? It’s only the most charming and most ruthless Spaniard to rampage across a tennis court since, well, Rafael Nadal. Yep – Carlos Alcaraz is once again in action after an 139-day absence due to a wrist injury. The compression sleeve over said wrist, which he wore for his first match at the US Open on Monday, was seemingly just a precaution: he dispatched Roman Safiullin in straight sets. “I’m just really, really happy that I was able to compete again,” Alcaraz said in a post-match interview. Trust us mate, so are we. That compression sleeve was definitely not the biggest aesthetic change Alcaraz made for his big comeback: his long, curling new lid, held back by an Alice band, is a departure from his buzzcut era and has a distinct Premier League energy to it. And there’s another Carlito style update too, in the form of the watch he was wearing after the match – one we haven’t seen him with before. It’s a Rolex Daytona in yellow gold; a special “Le Mans” edition to commemorate 100 years of the famous, Rolex-affiliated 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race. Carlos Alcaraz in a Rolex Daytona is hardly a revelation – the guy can’t get enough of them, for this is the fourth (at least) variant on the brand’s most sporty model he has. When he won Wimbledon in 2024, he wore one in yellow gold, with a rubber strap and meteorite dial; exactly what you’d want to confirm yourself as an out-of-this-world talent. Last year, he wore a a similar configuration – yellow gold and rubber strap – but with a vivid turquoise dial. He also wore a platinum, diamond-set Daytona with Eastern Arabic numerals, because why not? But this latest is the most off-menu yet: a rare model that, beyond the usual yellow-gold Daytona stylings, has a bunch of specific tweaks to make it more Le Mans–coded, like “100” being marked on the bezel in red as a hat-tip to the race’s centenary, and a different movement to standard, so the chronograph can track 24 hours (as you might want to for a day-long endurance race) rather than the usual 12. What does all this mean for our boy Carlos? He’s clearly going deep into a Daytona-shaped hole, for which we really can’t blame him. And while his previous Daytonas have been quite stylistically distinct, this one looks standard at first glance but has a bunch of IYKYK detail in there. Just as he’s having fun with his hair, he’s having fun with a classically blingy yellow-gold watch – and that Le Mans influence speaks to how his on-court comeback will not be short of dogged determination and stamina.