Can Mektic/Pavic Continue Masters 1000 Dominance In Madrid?
Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic enter the Mutua Madrid Open with an unbeaten 9-0 record in ATP Masters 1000 events. The second seeds will attempt to extend that run in the Spanish capital with their third trophy of the year at the level.
This year’s Miami and Monte-Carlo champions have been in peak form throughout the year, with 29 wins from 32 matches and five trophies from six finals. The Croatian pair will open its Madrid title bid against John Peers and Michael Venus or Max Purcell and Luke Saville in the second round.
The opening two Masters 1000 events of the year produced identical finals, with Mektic and Pavic defeating Daniel Evans and Neal Skupski in both the Miami and Monte-Carlo finals. That will not be possible at La Caja Magica, with the two teams both featuring in the bottom quarter of the draw.
View Madrid Doubles Draw
Evans and Skupski will meet Marcelo Demoliner and Daniil Medvedev in their tournament opener and will face the winner of Wesley Koolhof and Lukasz Kubot’s first-round clash against Greek wild cards Petros Tsitsipas and Stefanos Tsitsipas. The two teams that contested this year’s Australian Open final — Ivan Dodig and Filip Polasek and Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury — also feature in the bottom half of the draw.
Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah will attempt to collect their third trophy of the season in Madrid. The top seeds enter the tournament on a four-match unbeaten run, having not dropped a set en route to the Barcelona title last week. The Colombians will face Spanish wild cards Marc Lopez and Jaume Munar or Rohan Bopanna and Denis Shapovalov in the second round.
Eight seeds Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares join Cabal and Farah in the top quarter. The Great Ocean Road Open champions will meet 2017 champion Marcelo Melo and two-time winner Jean-Julien Rojer (2016, ’19) in the first round. The winner of that encounter will face 2020 Rolex Paris Masters champions Felix Auger-Aliassime and Hubert Hurkacz or Tim Puetz and Alexander Zverev in the second round.
Last year’s Rome champions Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos and sixth seeds Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut lead the way in the second quarter. Granollers and Zeballos await the winners of the blockbuster first-round clash between two-time Masters 1000 finalists Karen Khachanov and Andrey Rublev and Fabio Fognini and Diego Schwartzman. Herbert and Mahut will meet 2019 Roland Garros finalists Jeremy Chardy and Fabrice Martin in their first match.