MADRID OPEN: The ATP tour continues on the clay courts in Madrid on Wednesday and the home crowd will be hoping for a repeat of last year’s Spanish success. We preview the tournament and the favourites below.
Carlos Alcaraz – Defending his title
The Spaniard became the youngest ever winner of this tournament last year (pictured below) and will be determined to defend his crown against some of the tennis’ biggest names.
Last year’s Madrid Open was one to remember for the young Spaniard, toppling tennis greats on his way to the title. Alcaraz became the first player to beat Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in consecutive matches on clay as he beat the two legends in the quarterfinals and semi-finals respectively. This set up a final with second seed Alexander Zverev, which Alcaraz won fairly comfortably in two sets.
Alcaraz will want to continue his fine form in 2023 having won the Indian Wells Masters without dropping a set earlier this year – a feat only Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal had previously achieved. In front of his home crowd you can certainly expect to see Alcaraz defending his title into the latter stages of this tournament.
Novak Djokovic – World Number One
Novak Djokovic has been one of the dominant forces in tennis for over 10 years now, having spent a record 383 weeks in the number one spot. Djokovic already has two wins under his belt in 2023, winning the Adelaide Open as well as the Australian Open Grand Slam for a record 10th time.
Djokovic has both his wins this season on hard court and has already beat the likes of Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev and Stefanos Tsitsipas this season; all of whom currently rank in the Top 6. On his day, Djokovic can beat anyone, and his day certainly comes round more often than not. As always, he will be a serious contender in Madrid.
However, Djokovic’s clay season has not started particularly impressively. Competing in the Monte-Carlo masters earlier this month Djokovic was knocked out in the third round as he fell 6-4 5-7 6-4 to world number 20 Lorenzo Musetti.
Nonetheless, Djokovic has won this tournament four times before, including two out of the last three, so he will be more than comfortable on the clay in Madrid and looks likely to go deep into the tournament.
Alexander Zverev – Return to glory?
Zverev has enjoyed successes in recent times in Madrid, winning the tournament in 2018 and 2021 and reaching the final in 2022. He will be wanting to avenge last year’s loss in the final to Carlos Alcaraz and reclaim the title to join Nadal and Djokovic in the list of players to have won the tournament on clay three times.
The German has not had a particularly strong start to 2023. His best performance came in the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship where he reached the semi-finals before losing to Andrey Rublev in straight sets. Outside of that, Zverev has failed to make it past the fourth round in any competitions this year but he will hope the Madrid Open can provide a platform to kickstart his 2023 season.
Zverev has his best win percentage of any ATP 1000 tournament in the Madrid Open winning 86% of his matches, meaning he is always one to watch in the tournament and that is not expected to change this year.
Dušan Lajović – The outsider
A somewhat lesser-known player on the tour, the 32-year-old Serb is currently 70th in the ATP rankings.
Despite having not won an ATP 100 tournament one of the two times he has gone to a quarterfinal or better was in the 2018 Madrid Open where he narrowly lost to Kevin Anderson in three sets.
He has found some better form this year, reaching three Golden Swing quarterfinals in South America. He also defeated former World Number One Andy Murray in the first round of the 2023 Miami Open and made it to the third round where he was beaten by Carlos Alcaraz.
With a strong baseline game and the ability to generate great amounts of top spin, clay is the surface where he proves most effective. He is certainly one to look out for this year.
