At the Mutua Madrid Open, an Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Masters 1000 tournament in the capital of Spain with a prize fund of €8.2 million, world number one Jannik Sinner reached the 1/8 finals. The 24-year-old Italian is not only gradually gaining ground in the rankings from his closest pursuer, Carlos Alcaraz, but is also approaching a unique record. He could become the first tennis player in history to win five Masters in a row.
In the fight for first place in the ranking, which Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz have been waging between each other for the third season in a row, the current Madrid Masters can play a fundamentally different role compared to last year. Twelve months ago, both favorites did not perform in the Spanish capital for various reasons, but now only Alcaraz does not play there. Moreover, on Friday, April 24, it became known that an injury to his right wrist would force him to miss the Masters in Rome and the French Open. Thus, in Madrid, Sinner will certainly increase his lead in the rankings from his competitor, who is currently 390 points behind.
Previously, the current leader of men’s tennis did not achieve anything special on the courts of the Manzanares Park tennis center.
Five years ago, he lost to Australian Alexei Popyrin in the second round, and in 2022 and 2024, respectively, in the third round and quarterfinals, Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime stood in his way (however, in the second case, the Italian was unable to compete in the match due to a hip injury). But now Sinner seems to be in optimal physical condition, he has more than enough confidence in his abilities after titles in Indian Wells, Miami and Monte Carlo, and Auger-Aliassime, by the way, is in the other, lower half of the bracket. That is, all the prerequisites for triumph are present, and if Sinner achieves it, he will become the first tennis player to conquer all four of the first Masters of the season. Moreover, taking into account the tournament in Paris, which Sinner held in November last year, he has a chance to set another record – to extend his winning streak to five “thousanders” (in 2011 and 2015, Serbian Novak Djokovic also won five masters in a row, but only those in which he took part).
And so far everything is going well for the Italian. In the Spanish capital, that is, essentially, on the Alcaraz field, he first, not without a fight, defeated the Frenchman Benjamin Bonzi, who made his way into the main draw through qualification, and then more easily dealt with another winner of the qualifying competitions – the Dane Elmer Möller – 6:2, 6:3.
The best Russian tennis player Daniil Medvedev overcame his starting second round not without difficulty.
The second meeting in four months with Hungarian Fabian Marozan, whom Medvedev overcame a two-game deficit in January in the third round of the Australian Open, again turned out to be stubborn and consisted of three sets, but after the Russian’s “dry” defeat from Italian Matteo Berrettini at the beginning of the “Masters” in Monte Carlo, even such a victory should be considered encouraging. In the end, soil is the most problematic surface for Medvedev. Last year in Madrid the Russian looked good and reached the quarterfinals, losing there to the future champion Norwegian Casper Ruud, so now it would be nice for him to defend 200 rating points. His next opponent is another Norwegian tennis player, 19-year-old Nikolai Budkov Kjaer, a former world number one among juniors who won the junior Wimbledon in 2024. This young player, ranked outside the top 100, is considered one of the most promising representatives of his generation and has never had to deal with the representatives of the top ten. Therefore, his match with Medvedev could turn out to be extremely interesting.
Russia’s first racket, Mirra Andreeva, continues to perform successfully in the women’s half of the Mutua Madrid Masters.
She has two victories over Hungarian tennis players – Panna Udvardi and Dalma Galfi. To repeat her last year’s result and make it to the quarterfinals, the Russian needs to get past another Hungarian representative, Anna Bondar. Moreover, she has a good chance of ending up in the semi-finals, because the titled Polish player Iga Szwiatek, who was in the same quarter of the bracket, has already dropped out of the fight.
