Madrid ATP 1000

[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


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[jimlosaltos]

Scorecard: Faced 18 BPs and won in straights.

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[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]

Sabalenka wins Madrid in contested but straight sets.

Coco, who'd served quite well in making the final, hit 8 double faults in only 11 games.
She also won a lower percentage on her first service than Aryna did on her second.
Despite that Coco had a set point in the second and took it to a tiebreak. Cup half full?

I fear I have to post some video/ images of Coco's serve. Sigh.

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[jimlosaltos]

Casper Ruud, in tomorrow's finals vs Draper in Madrid, gives more detail on why he had to change his game.
Ruud joins Sasha Zverev, Daniil Medvedev, and Andy Roddick in saying the pro tennis balls slowing substantially after the Covid epidemic disrupted the supply chain, and have stayed slower since.

Casper has been going for winners earlier, hitting more flat balls, because it's easier to attack heavy topspin.

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[jimlosaltos]

Draper, as he is about to serve for the first set, has been playing lights out.
Ruud is playing well, has hit some great backhand passes, but is under pressure constantly.

Per Jim Courier: Draper's back hand is "averaging near 80 MPH".

[stotty]

Jack got tight...5-5

[jimlosaltos]

Jack got tight...5-5

Yup, he did. Understandably. And Ruud got clever and stole the first set.
Draper played lights out, was on top all set, then got tight and Ruud got really clever. On break point, Draper serving to Ruud backhand, Rudd started in his normal fairly deep position then ran way back during Jack's toss and hit a sky high lob return to Jack's forehand corner. Completely flummoxed him.


Set to the veteran.


And Draper is screaming, angrily at his own bench - for a long time. Don't know if that fires him up or is Jack melting down. Haven't seen enough to guess.

Courier: "They (his box) are telling him "You need to read him" and I think Courier said, 'Jack is yelling "That's not what I need to hear now".

And then Ruud takes the first game of the second set with back-to-back aces wide.

[jimlosaltos]

Tennis Insight's has Ruud forehand and backhand in the first set at an identical 9.2 "Shot Quality".
That's awesome.

As second set starts TI puts Ruud's serve at 9.6 which is, what will I call it, "Gio Level" Naw ....

Jack has finally settled back down, levels second set at 3-3 and Ruud is starting to look a bit tense, misses a return a routine volley. Ruud's 0 for all his Masters and majors finals. Got to be no his mind.

[jimlosaltos]

Priceless. Ruud scrambles to get to a run around forehand hits a winner at a ridiculously short angle with 4,303 RPMs.

Courier as camera shows Stefan Edberg nodding and mugging in appreciation: "If you totaled up all Stefan's RPMs for his career you might not get to 4,303 RPMs"

[stroke]

Ruud get a break to go up 3-2 3rd set. 2 monster forehands out there. I would love to see their rpm's for the match. They are certainly 2 of the highest rpm forehands on Tour.

[stotty]

Ruud get a break to go up 3-2 3rd set. 2 monster forehands out there. I would love to see their rpm's for the match. They are certainly 2 of the highest rpm forehands on Tour.

Yes, two great forehands. I'm not sure whose I prefer. I like the way Ruud can flatten his out when needed. And what a final game from Ruud...emphatic.

[jimlosaltos]

Ruud get a break to go up 3-2 3rd set. 2 monster forehands out there. I would love to see their rpm's for the match. They are certainly 2 of the highest rpm forehands on Tour.

Yes. Sadly, I don't see those. The velocity stats are almost identical: forehand, serves, except Draper backhand is 122 kph vs 99 kph for Ruud. Well, and Ruud second server is 107 MPH vs 96 MPH (sorry to mix units but that's what they got }

In fact, they didn't do many of the stats for the match, at least on TennisTV. But I found the second set.

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[stroke]

Yes they used to regularly give rpm's on forehands, but for some reason have stopped.

[stroke]

https://open.substack.com/pub/hughclarke/p/draper-vs-rune-madrid-final-recap?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1t7zzc

My question has been answered. Ruud had a significant edge on Draper rpm wise on the forehands. That is something.