Madrid ATP 1000

[jimlosaltos]

Women's final is Gauff vs Sabalenka to be played tomorrow (Saturday)

Coco leads H2H 5-4, splitting last 2 and Aryna winning the 2024 AO final over Coco.

[jimlosaltos]

Scorecard: Faced 18 BPs and won in straights.

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[jimlosaltos]

Men's finals are Draper vs Ruud.

Rudd vs Cerundolo was astonishing. Rudd hurt himself in warm-ups (rib area), faced break points in both sets, and yet won 6-4, 7-5.

Per Robbie Koenig: "It was the most Break Points (18) that Casper has ever faced, in a 2/3 set match!" The cherry on top of Casper's "performance on break points today is that Cerundolo was Forum in BP conversion rate this season"

Best part, when the mild-mannered Ruud told the chair about a spectator trying to interfere with his serve: "You wouldn't see a Norwegian spectator do it to his opponent and laughed out loud when he mentioned Sabalenka."

P.S. And the shot of the day might be Ruud, scrambling for a drop shot, both players at net, hit -- something, I'm trying to vid a decent video to figure it out -- where he faked pushing it to his left and somehow hit it backwards behind Francisco. Flipped his wrist to hit in almost backwards, perhaps?

Per Bernard Faschen/ Euro journo

Players this century to reach the final in Monte-Carlo, Madrid (on clay), and Roland-Garros:

Rafael Nadal
Roger Federer
Novak Djokovic
David Ferrer
Stan Wawrinka
Stefanos Tsitsipas
Carlos Alcaraz
Casper Ruud


#

[stroke]

Yeah the thing I like about Draper is that he seems to be so little drama. He just plays and wins and that is it. He reminds of Thiem and Ruud that way

He is certainly a professional. A class act.

[neilchok]

Watched Draper win Indian Wells beating Carlos Alcaraz and Holger Rune back to back. Impressive.
The semifinal over Alcaraz was one-sided, making me wonder if something was wrong. But then Draper repeated it on Sunday just disarming Rune.
In particular, Draper's inside-in forehand from his backhand (lefty) corner was stunning.
For his size, he's quick and got to that position more often than one might guess he could. Then, the inside-out forehand is so powerful you have to cheat toward your forehand and he can either way.

One curious thing is that as a lefty (a righty playing left handed, which should be cheating IMHO } he's better serving wide to the deuce court than hitting a lefty hook.

Big guy.

Yeah the thing I like about Draper is that he seems to be so little drama. He just plays and wins and that is it. He reminds of Thiem and Ruud that way

[stroke]

Musetti(Gasquet 2.0) competes so well. In the top 10 now 1st time, he takes the 1st set vs LL Diallo, who looks like the best mover at 6'8" ever.

[jimlosaltos]

Coco Gauff was once 0-7 vs Iga, and now she's a lowly 4-14 -- BUT she's won the last three (3) in a row.

Today, on clay, it wasn't close Gauff won 1 and 3 and 57 points to 26 for Swiatek.

Coco played with, in her own words, "Power and margin" while Iga's normally great movement wasn't there. Something is off.

[jimlosaltos]

This is my first time watching Jack Draper, as I am now allowing myself a little bit of time to watch tennistv. Man he is amazing. He is so serious on the court. He is also insanely strong and fast too! He is very consistent for how hard he hits it. He just killed Tommy Paul. I couldn't believe what a mismatch it looked on the court and Tommy Paul is a great player.

He looked the closest thing to Rafa I have seen with his overpowering topspin forehand that would kick high, and then he could hit it flat. He already has a better serve than Nadal. He is really fast, and he takes every point extremely seriously kind of how Nadal did.

He seems to have the same maturity of other top players. To be honest I am more impressed with him than even Sinner and Carlos at times.

Watched Draper win Indian Wells beating Carlos Alcaraz and Holger Rune back to back. Impressive.
The semifinal over Alcaraz was one-sided, making me wonder if something was wrong. But then Draper repeated it on Sunday just disarming Rune.
In particular, Draper's inside-in forehand from his backhand (lefty) corner was stunning.
For his size, he's quick and got to that position more often than one might guess he could. Then, the inside-out forehand is so powerful you have to cheat toward your forehand and he can either way.

One curious thing is that as a lefty (a righty playing left handed, which should be cheating IMHO } he's better serving wide to the deuce court than hitting a lefty hook.

Big guy.

[neilchok]

This is my first time watching Jack Draper, as I am now allowing myself a little bit of time to watch tennistv. Man he is amazing. He is so serious on the court. He is also insanely strong and fast too! He is very consistent for how hard he hits it. He just killed Tommy Paul. I couldn't believe what a mismatch it looked on the court and Tommy Paul is a great player.

He looked the closest thing to Rafa I have seen with his overpowering topspin forehand that would kick high, and then he could hit it flat. He already has a better serve than Nadal. He is really fast, and he takes every point extremely seriously kind of how Nadal did.

He seems to have the same maturity of other top players. To be honest I am more impressed with him than even Sinner and Carlos at times.

[jimlosaltos]

Now that the power is back on ...

Francisco Cerundolo remains undefeated vs Sasha Zverev 3-0. I have to watch one of their matches to see what this match-up thing is about.

19 yo Mensik through to the quarters vs Cerundolo -- two of the biggest forehands on tour will be abusing tennis balls.

Three one-handers in one ladder is unfair. Musetti beats Tsitsipas 5 and 6 ( Stef modifying his service is coming with growth pains), Now, Musetti meets de Minaur for a potential match with Dimitrov.

Ruud just broke to serve for the first set vs Fritz. I'd love to Ruud get through.

WTA Side: tomorrow has Keys vs Swiatek and Andreev vs Gauff. Those sound good.

[jimlosaltos]

Alex Bubic as he was losing to 19 year old Jakub Mensik, to chair Mohamed Lehyani:

“Mohamed, remember when tennis was easy? Like five years ago it was super easy to play tennis,” said the four-time ATP Tour champion Bublik. “A bunch of random people in the Top 50, barely moving. Now this guy is not even Top 5, not even Top 10. What is that?”

[stotty]

My sister lives in Portugal. I was speaking with her on the phone at lunchtime them suddenly the phone went dead. Not been able to make contact since.

How weird. No one, as yet, seems to have a handle on what the true cause of it is.

[jimlosaltos]

wow!!!! how scary!!!! I hope they get their power back soon

Power is largely back on in Madrid now, but it is nearly 11 PM there.

"Unprecedented outage" hit Spain, Portugal, and parts of France. Google Gemini says: "around 60 million people" were affected. But that's the combined population of Spain and Portugal so the AI might be guessing.

Per AP: "It was the second serious European power outage in less than six weeks after a March 20 fire shut down Heathrow Airport in the U.K., and it came as authorities across Europe gird against sabotage backed by Russia."

At least one match was completed AFTER the outage { Arnaldi beat Dzumhur) But the score isn't official until Mohamed Lahyani enters it -- which he can't do without power.

Otherwise Dimitrov won, Andreeva and Gauff.

[neilchok]

Play Cancelled due to Massive Power Outage in Spain.

ATP: Play cancelled for the day in Madrid due to power outage :Large parts of Spain and Portugal have been hit by the power outage, which has shut off traffic lights. All rail traffic has come to a halt in Spain, and the metro in Lisbon and Porto, Portugal, is closed."

Reuters news story at this link: "Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut."

Stadium in shadows.

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wow!!!! how scary!!!! I hope they get their power back soon

[jimlosaltos]

Play Cancelled due to Massive Power Outage in Spain.

ATP: Play cancelled for the day in Madrid due to power outage :Large parts of Spain and Portugal have been hit by the power outage, which has shut off traffic lights. All rail traffic has come to a halt in Spain, and the metro in Lisbon and Porto, Portugal, is closed."

Reuters news story at this link: "Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut."

Stadium in shadows.

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