Scouting Report: 10 Things To Watch In Madrid

Seventeen of the Top 20 players in the ATP Rankings are in Madrid this week for the Mutua Madrid Open, the fourth ATP Masters 1000 tournament of the season. The Top 4 seeds — Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Alexander Zverev and Roger Federer — are all former titlists at the event held in the Spanish capital.

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10 Things To Watch In Madrid
1) Roger Returns to Clay: Three-time Madrid champion Federer will play his first match on clay since a third-round loss to Dominic Thiem in Rome on 12 May 2016. Federer is 35-8 in Madrid and his last appearance here came in 2015, when he lost to Nick Kyrgios in three tie-break sets. Federer has a 214-68 lifetime win-loss record on clay, and his 75.9 winning percentage on the surface ranks third among active players.

2) Rafa Eyes Title: Nadal has hoisted the Madrid trophy five times, and since Madrid moved to clay in 2009, he is 36-6 at the Caja Magica. Nadal still seeks his first title of 2019 after losses to eventual champions Fabio Fognini in Monte-Carlo and Thiem in Barcelona. The last time Nadal came into Madrid without winning Monte-Carlo or Barcelona was in 2015.

3) Novak Reaches 250: Djokovic enters Madrid as World No. 1 for the fourth time (2012-13, 2016, 2019), and Monday will mark the 250th week that the 31-year-old Serb tops the ATP Rankings. A year ago, he was ranked 12th entering this event, coming in with a 5-5 record after overcoming a right elbow injury. This season, though, he is 15-4, having won a 15th Grand Slam title at the Australian Open.

4) Titleholder: Last year at Madrid, Zverev became the first player to win an ATP Tour clay-court title without getting broken (since service stats started being kept in 1991), facing only one break point in the process. This year, the 22-year-old German comes in with a 13-8 record on the season, and he is 4-6 in his past six tournaments since his best result of 2019, a runner-up finish at Acapulco.

5) Back Again: Juan Martin del Potro is returning to action after a two-and-a-half-month absence. The Argentine has played only one event in 2019 thus far, a quarter-final run at Delray Beach, before withdrawing from Masters 1000 events at Indian Wells and Miami due to a right knee injury. That injury also kept him out of the Australian Open for the fourth time in five years.

6) Ferrer Farewell: Former World No. 3 David Ferrer will play the final event of his storied career this week. The 27-time ATP Tour singles titlist and 2013 Roland Garros finalist will retire after his 16th showing at Madrid. Ferrer made six straight quarterfinals or better at the event from 2010-15.

7) Going Wild: Local wild cards Jaume Munar, 21, and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, 19, will make their Madrid main draw debuts. Munar is ranked a career-high No. 55, while Davidovich Fokina just had a breakthrough at Estoril, where he beat No. 18 Gael Monfils to reach the semi-finals.

8) Felix Flying: #NextGenATP Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime has stormed up the ATP Rankings in 2019, currently at a career-best No. 30, and he only has 38 points to defend through Roland Garros. Auger-Aliassime defeated compatriot Denis Shapovalov in the first round and he will face five-time champ Nadal in the second round.

9) Thiem’s Time: Dominic Thiem just won the biggest clay-court title of his career in Barcelona, defeating Nadal in the semi-finals. The Austrian also claimed his maiden Masters 1000 trophy at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells.

10) Bryan Brothers Are Back: In last year’s Madrid doubles final, Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan retired for the first time in 1,407 matches as a team, due to Bob’s right hip injury, which required surgery on 2 August 2018. Bob returned to competition in the first week of 2019, and the Bryan brothers have gotten back to their winning ways since then, claiming titles in Miami and Delray Beach.

from Tennis - ATP World Tour http://bit.ly/2Lrocwb