He started leaving home very early. How did he cope?
“As I took him around, I noticed he was a bit homesick. When he was away for a couple of days, he was fine; when he was away a bit longer, three or four days, you could see he was feeling unwell. He didn't talk much; he was a bit sad. At the Under-12 championships, his mother came down and he calmed down.”
As for the emotional aspect, I have to say that Carlitos was not a child who particularly missed his family environment. He never minded spending time away from home. When we traveled to participate in tournaments and his parents called to talk to him, the conversations were often brief, purely formal, just a few words, and then he would go back to what he was doing. Some might see this as excessive coldness, but I know that tennis almost completely fulfilled his needs: his family's love was a given. His parents also handled the distance well. When we traveled, they didn't call all the time for no reason... Carlos Sr. sent messages to ask how everything was going, and naturally he was interested in anything related to the tournament—not surprisingly, he often knew the opponents, followed them from home, and sent us comments about them—but without going overboard.