Novak Djokovic vs Nicolas Almagro Madrid 2017 Preview and Prediction
Novak Djokovic will once more look to kick-start his season on Tuesday, playing Nicolas Almagro in his opener in Madrid.…
Novak Djokovic will once more look to kick-start his season on Tuesday, playing Nicolas Almagro in his opener in Madrid.…
View FedEx ATP Head2Head for the following match-ups Wednesday at the Mutua Madrid Open & vote for who you think will win!
Djokovic v Almagro | Nadal v Fognini | Tsonga v Ferrer | Cilic vs Zverev
View Wednesday schedule and check back later for preview notes.
Nick Kyrgios and Jack Sock advanced to the quarter-finals of the Mutua Madrid Open on Tuesday, joining forces to beat fifth seeds Raven Klaasen and Rajeev Ram 6-4, 6-4. Kyrgios/Sock dropped only eight points on serve during the 60-minute win.
Klaasen and Ram have picked up titles this year at the Delray Beach Open and the BNP Paribas Open. Elsewhere, Fabrice Martin and Daniel Nestor accounted for last month’s Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters champions Rohan Bopanna and Pablo Cuevas 6-3, 6-2 in 54 minutes.
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Top seeds Henri Kontinen and John Peers also moved into the quarter-finals, prevailing against Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic 4-6, 6-4, 14-12. Lucky losers Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah won their fifth consecutive match by beating Spanish wild cards David Marrero and Tommy Robredo 6-3, 6-2. Cabal/Farah took home the BMW Open by FWU doubles title last week.
Two-time champion Andy Murray returned to the clay with ease on Tuesday, gaining a routine 6-4, 6-3 win against Romanian qualifier Marius Copil on the Manolo Santana Centre Court at the Mutua Madrid Open. The top-seeded Murray improved to 11-0 in his opening matches in the Spanish capital, dating back to his debut in 2006.
The Scot will meet #NextGenATP Croatian Borna Coric or French qualifier Pierre-Hugues Herbert.
“When I started to control the points more towards the end of the first set and second set, I was hitting the ball pretty clean, creating a few chances. I didn’t give him any opportunities,” Murray said. “It was good for the first match.”
Murray is looking to kick-start his 2017 campaign in Madrid, as he did a year ago. Last year, he arrived in the Spanish metropolis with a 13-4 record and no titles. But Murray went on to reach the Madrid final (l. to Djojkovic) and finish the season on a 65-5 run and with an ATP World Tour-best nine titles.
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This season, Murray is now 16-5 and has one title to his name, his 45th tour-level crown at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships in February. But the World No. 1 hasn’t reached another final since his Dubai triumph (d. Verdasco).
Against Copil, Murray was as solid as ever. He broke in the 10th game to take the opening set when Copil netted a backhand slice. Murray earned his second break to lead 4-2 in the second set and served out the match to advance in 84 minutes.
“I still think there’s a ways to go. I don’t think I’m playing perfectly just now. I think there’s just things I can definitely do better. But the most positive thing about tonight was that I feel like I can serve a little bit better than I did today,” said Murray, who faced no break points.
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American Ryan Harrison earned his first win against Aussie Bernard Tomic 7-5, 4-6, 6-2 to set-up a second-round meeting against 16th seed Nick Kyrgios. Harrison had been 0-2 against Tomic in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series.
The 25-year-old Harrison, who reached the Estoril quarter-finals last week (l. to Ferrer), hit 15 aces and broke four times to move on in one hour and 50 minutes.
Former Top 50 player Bernard Mitton of South Africa passed away last Friday. He was 62.
The 6’2” right-hander, who was born in Vryburg, South Africa, but had been living in Newport Beach, California, won two ATP World Tour singles titles and nine doubles crowns during his career, which started in 1973, only five years after the beginning of the Open Era (April 1968), and ended in 1984.
Mitton’s final tour-level match was against then-World No. 5 Jimmy Arias of the U.S. at 1984 Wimbledon. South Africa native and former World No. 7 Johan Kriek said Mitton led a generation of South African players.
“Bernie was a very talented, smart and funny guy. He was the elder statesman of South African tennis, travelling to Europe to progress his career. When Ian Cunningham, a top coach in Johannesburg and Pretoria, moved from South Africa to Austria, we all followed at different stages and trained together. Bernie was first there in 1974 and I arrived in 1978, a young buck, who learned a lot from Bernie. As a guy from South Africa who was a tennis pro, I thought maybe I could do that,” Kriek said.
Mitton won his first title on the grass at Newport in 1978 and at San Jose a year later. He’d reach three more finals in the late ’70s and early ’80s in San Jose, Adelaide and Johannesburg. Mitton, who reached No. 48 in the Emirates ATP Rankings, also recorded wins against all-time greats John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, John Newcombe and Arthur Ashe.
Mitton even helped Ashe beat Connors during the 1975 Wimbledon final. Mitton had prevailed against Connors 7-6, 6-1 in the semi-finals of a small pre-Wimbledon grass-court tournament in Chichester in June 1975. The South African slow-balled Connors in the way that Ashe would against Connors in the 1975 Wimbledon final weeks later. Ashe, always one to do his research, sought out Mitton before the Wimbledon final for help.
Kriek said of Mitton: “He was always a funny guy and he didn’t take life too seriously. He beat John Newcombe at Wimbledon in 1976 and was a set and a break up against Bjorn Borg at the US Open [in 1978]… He was mentally strong and had one of the fastest swinging forehands with a wooden racquet.”
In doubles, Mitton teamed with six different players, including Tim Gullikson, Butch Walts and Raymond Moore, to win his nine titles.
After his playing career finished, Mitton later coached in Newport Beach, Rancho San Clemente and Irvine, California.
“He helped so many tennis players from South Africa and was a great coach in California for many years,” Kriek said. “He will be greatly missed.”
World number one Andy Murray progressed to the third round of the Madrid Open with a straight-set victory over Romanian Marius Copil.
The Briton, who had a bye in the first round, claimed a 6-4 6-3 victory.
Murray, 29, was not at his best in the opening exchanges but broke world number 104 Copil at 5-4 to take the first set and pounced again at 3-2 in the second.
He will face Borna Coric or Pierre-Hugues Herbert in the last 16.
It was a solid display from Murray against a potentially dangerous opponent as he prepares for the French Open, which starts on 28 May.
Copil will move into the world’s top 100 next week and the 6ft 4ins Romanian was far more aggressive in the first set.
It took Murray until the 10th game to break his serve, and he finally prevailed through attacking Copil’s shaky backhand.
The Briton looked far more focused in the second set as he took control and wrapped up victory in one hour and 23 minutes – with just nine unforced errors.
Murray reached the final in Madrid last year, where he was beaten by Novak Djokovic, and took the title in 2015, but has had a mixed clay-court season so far.
After taking a month out due to an elbow injury and withdrawing from Britain’s Davis Cup quarter-final defeat by France, he lost in the Monte Carlo Masters last 16 on his return.
The Scot was beaten by Austrian Dominic Thiem in the semi-finals of the Barcelona Open last month.
Maria Sharapova will be offered a wildcard into next month’s Aegon Classic in Birmingham.
Sources told BBC Sport that preliminary discussions between Sharapova’s team and the Lawn Tennis Association are under way.
The move has the blessing of the LTA’s outgoing chief executive Michael Downey.
Sharapova has not played a Wimbledon warm-up event since she reached the final in Birmingham in 2010.
Her presence in the field is likely to boost ticket sales at an event that is perpetually overshadowed by the ATP tournament at The Queen’s Club in the same week. Tickets are still available for all days of the tournament which runs from 19-25 June.
The LTA will expect criticism for their decision, which appears to have been made purely on commercial grounds. Andy Murray and Heather Watson are just two players who have expressed their uneasiness about the quantity of wildcards being offered to Sharapova since she returned from a 15-month ban for taking meldonium.
Watson, who will receive a wildcard of her own into the Birmingham draw, said during March’s Miami Open that from “a moral standpoint you should have to work your way back up if you’ve been on a ban”.
There is unlikely to be swift confirmation that Sharapova will play in Birmingham, where she won the title in both 2004 and 2005. That is because all eyes are currently on Roland Garros, which will announce next Tuesday whether they are to offer Sharapova a wildcard for either qualifying or the main draw of the French Open.
That, in turn, will have implications for how much Sharapova wishes to play on the grass. The five-time Grand Slam champion has already been offered a wildcard into the event in the Dutch town of Rosmalen in the week after the French Open.
Sharapova’s participation in the rival Nottingham tournament should not be completely ruled out if she loses early in Paris, or a French Open invitation fails to materialise.
The All England Club will not meet to finalise their wildcards until 20 June, but despite her second-round defeat to Eugenie Bouchard in Madrid, Sharapova can still gain direct entry into Wimbledon by reaching the semi-finals in Rome next week.
Johanna Konta, Garbine Muguruza, Agnieszka Radwanska and Simona Halep headline the entry list in Birmingham, which will be confirmed later this week.
“We are currently in the process of deciding which players will receive wildcards for our summer season grass court tournaments” an LTA spokesman told the BBC.
“It’s a carefully considered process which happens at this time every year. We will announce the names of wild card recipients in due course, before the start of each tournament.”
