After a long week of thrilling tennis, it is time to recap some of the important highlights from the Mutua Madrid Open.
What we Learned Learned at the Mutua Madrid Open
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Simona Halep Can Still Play Tennis
The Romanian came into Madrid with a 10-9 record on the year, a couple of opening round losses. In Melbourne, she was shocked by qualifier Shuai Zheng who was 0-14 in Grand Slam main draws beforehand. As a result, she was coming into Madrid searching for confidence and she managed to find it. After a few early round struggles, she stormed through former Slam winner Samantha Stosur and former Australian Open finalist Dominika Cibulkova to win the second Premier Mandatory title of her career. One can say the draw opened up for her, and in reality it did. Nonetheless, she did well to seize this opportunity and given how her year has progressed so far, there were no guarantees.
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Novak Djokovic Still Leads the Field
Given his relentless consistency, his opening-round loss in Monte Carlo to Jiri Vesely came as a shock to many. Nevertheless, many felt this was a minor setback and that he would be back on track soon enough. Surely enough, their assumptions were correct as he breezed to the final here, and was pushed to three sets before prevailing against Andy Murray. This was the first time the Serb has played here since 2013, where a dramatic match against Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov saw him booed throughout the match.
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Rafael Nadal is not Back to his Best
The nine-time Roland Garros champion has brought some of the magic that made him such a great player back into the mix. Nonetheless, it proved that he still has a long way to go to get back to the pinnacle of his game. Granted the altitude makes Madrid a unique clay tournament in which conditions are lightening quick, Nadal carried a 17-6 record going into this match against him. His title runs in Barcelona and Madrid do shake the pot up for Roland Garros in two weeks, however.
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2016 WTA is All Over the Place
Most people’s quarterfinal brackets didn’t have Dominica Cibulkova, Sorana Cirstea, Louisa Chirico, Daria Gavrilova, Irina-Camelia Begu, and Patria-Maria Tig. Stosur and Halep are established clay courters so them progressing to the quarterfinals is no big surprise. While this can partially be attributed to the depth in the women’s game right now, it also must be said that the top players are not delivering on a day-by-day basis. None of the top 4 seeds managed to make it out of the third round, with Victoria Azarenka withdrawing before her match against Chirico.
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Rankings are Wacky
Despite getting surgery, and playing only three tournaments thus far in 2016, Roger Federer regained the No. 2 ranking from Andy Murray following the latter failing to defend his title. While it seems absurd, Federer had a brilliant second half of the year last year as opposed to Murray, whose strongest results came at the beginning of last year. Taking that into account, the shift in ranks does not sound too surprising. Furthermore, everything is being won by one player at the moment so the amount of points being distributed among everyone else is in scrambles
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Madrid clay is very quick
We knew this already, but because of the altitude it plays at, the conditions in Madrid are much faster than they are at Roland Garros. The Nadal-Murray semifinal match illustrated this point beautifully. In Monte Carlo, Murray did not have enough power in his strokes to not only hit through the slow clay, but Nadal as well. On the flip side, the slow clay gave Nadal time to set up the extreme grip on his forehand. In Madrid, Murray was able to use the pace of the court and rush Nadal’s timing, resulting in the opposite outcome.
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