ATP Madrid Tips, Preview & Analysis | Our Picks For This Week’s Tennis

After his successful defence of the title in Barcelona, Carlos Alcaraz makes the trip into the interior of Spain to attempt a double defence. Can anyone stop the young Spaniard?

Ultimately, he was just too good. Alcaraz, despite some injury concerns going into the tournament, was comfortable at pretty much all times and won the title without dropping a set.

The conditions in Madrid are usually quite different to Barcelona or Rome. The altitude in the Spanish capital usually means that the field of potential winners opens up a bit. Nadal has only won this title five times, Federer won here three times, and Andy Murray has won this title twice.

Murray is in the field again this year, but has a tough draw, with a potential meeting with Daniil Medvedev in the second round. Dominic Thiem is a two-time finalist and continues his quest to return to the top with another wildcard here.

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ATP Madrid Betting Tips

Carlos Alcaraz to win the tournament without dropping a set 1pt @ 11/2 at Bet365

Daniil Medvedev to win Quarter 4 1.5pt @ 12/5 at Bet365

Francisco Cerundolo to win Quarter 3 0.5pt @ 8/1 at Bet365

Event In Focus: ATP Madrid

There are still a few top names missing from the field for this ‘middle’ clay-court Masters event. Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal are missing, Jannik Sinner is, perhaps wisely, also giving this event a miss. Often, if a player is going to miss out any of the three clay Masters events in the lead up to Roland Garros then it is Madrid, as the conditions here are so much different to Paris.

Ranking Analysis

The #1 and #2 clay courters in the ELO rankings actually met last week in the Barcelona final, and it seems pretty clear from that match where the power lies at this moment. Carlos Alcaraz, as is demonstrated by these stats, is streets ahead of anyone else that is active on the tour right now.

Lorenzo Musetti and Francisco Cerundolo are also ranked way higher on clay than their official ATP ranking so are definitely worth watching out for on this surface.

2023 ATP Tour Form

Carlos Alcaraz is leading the way in the current season’s form. He has only played five tournaments so far this year, two South American clay events and then Indian Wells and Miami, and then Barcelona last week, but has clearly performed at an elite level in those events.

Daniil Medvedev is the other player in the field having an outstanding start to the year. So we only have Monte-Carlo to go on in terms of assessing his clay-court level but he has fairly good there, winning an epic match against Alexander Zverev and only going out to Holger Rune in the quarter-final. 2023 could well be a good year on the surface for the Russian, even if he does only play the minimum number of events on the surface.

Frances Tiafoe, Karen Khachanov, and Alex De Minaur, are having sneaky good starts to the 2023 season as well. Holger Rune’s stats are improving by the match as his clay court prowess comes to the fore.

Career Clay Court Analysis

Without wanting to sound like a broken record, it is Alcaraz who tops the data for career clay court win perentage and games won. He is obviously still relatively inexperienced on the tour, but has played a lot of clay court matches because of how well he has done in the tournaments.

Casper Ruud is the man in the field with the most wins on clay, and his data proves that he is of an elite level on the surface, over 110 usually indicates this. Stefanos Tsitsipas is the other proven elite clay courter in the field, with Dominic Thiem, or, at least, the ghost of Thiem, also demonstrating a high level over his career.

Of the other players, Lorenzo Musetti is building a nice profile. Over 60% match wins and close to 105% games won is a good start on the main tour for the Italian. Jiri Lehecka seems to be following suit, albeit over an even smaller sample size. Ben Shelton, on the other hand, clearly has work to do, but the good news is that he seems to be keen to learn.

Daniil Medvedev has worked his way up to an even win/loss record on the surface, whilst Alex De Minaur, Tommy Paul, and Frances Tiafoe are the other seeds with negative win/loss records on the surface.

Form & Madrid Record

Zverev’s current form is a concern for backers of the German. It is especially disappointing as his Madrid record is pretty exceptional having won in 2021 and reached the final last year.

Tsitsipas is another one with a good Madrid record and his recent form is definitely improving after a difficult few weeks of coming back from injury too early.

Meanwhile, with a lot of the top players here for this event it seems as though the likes of Khachanov, Tiafoe, Zverev, van de Zandschulp and Davidovich Fokina will have to up their game against the best if they harbour ambitions to take the title home.

ATP Madrid Draw

Madrid has a 32-seed, 96-man draw. The top 32 seeds will be given a bye into the second round.

ATP Madrid Betting Tips

Carlos Alcaraz to win the tournament without dropping a set 1pt @ 11/2 at Bet365

Alcaraz had a bit of a reputation as one who would go round the houses a little bit to get a match win, he wasn’t ruthless enough in his rookie season on tour. It seems as though Juan Carlos Ferrero and his team have managed to get the message through to the young Spaniard that if he has the ambition to be one of the world’s best and win multiple big titles a year then he needs to conserve energy.

He has just come off the back of winning Barcelona without dropping a set, he won Indian Wells without dropping a set. Indeed, the only time that Alcaraz has dropped a set since the Golden Swing was in his defeat to Jannik Sinner in Miami. 11/2 is a touch shorter than I would’ve hoped but still seems fair for something that has happened twice already this year.

Daniil Medvedev to win Quarter 4 1.5pt @ 12/5 at Bet365

The Russian may not enjoy the clay too much, but I think that the layers are underestimating him a touch too much. The effort is definitely there for Medvedev, as we saw against Alexander Zverev in Monte-Carlo and these conditions, with as good a serve as he has, should see him to pretty good effect here.

Francisco Cerundolo to win Quarter 3 0.5pt @ 8/1 at Bet365

Cerundolo had a good run in Monte-Carlo and there isn’t that much depth in this quarter. He could be the one to upset Stefanos Tsitsipas.