Dominic Thiem was the only player who could compete with Rafael Nadal on clay last season. Nobody has been able to do so in 2018, but Thiem will get another shot on Friday in Madrid. Alexander Zverev and John Isner are also in quarterfinal action.
(1) Rafael Nadal vs. (5) Dominic Thiem
Nadal and Thiem will be squaring off for the eighth time in their careers and for the sixth time in the span of seven clay-court tournaments dating back to last spring when they meet again in the quarterfinals of the Mutua Madrid Open on Friday. They faced each other in Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, and the French Open in 2017, and now in both Barcelona and Madrid this season. Nadal is leading the overall head-to-head series 5-2 and all seven of their previous encounters have come on the slow stuff. Thiem pulled off upsets at the Buenos Aires event in 2016 (in a third-set tiebreaker) and at last year’s Rome Masters (6-4, 6-3), but the Spaniard has since dominated 6-3, 6-4, 6-0 in the 2017 Roland Garros semifinals and 6-0, 6-2 a few weeks ago in Monte-Carlo.
Thiem has been hopeless in his last two clay-court efforts against Nadal, but he certainly isn’t alone. The world No. 1 has won 50 consecutive sets on this surface and no one during this stretch has even pushed him to a tiebreaker. Nadal has had no trouble continuing the trend in Madrid, where has defeated and Gael Monfils 6-3, 6-1 and Diego Schwartzman 6-3, 6-4. Thiem took a much more circuitous route to the quarters, outlasting Federico Delbonis 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 before overcoming Borna Coric 2-6, 7-6(5), 6-4. Both of the seventh-ranked Austrian’s wins over Nadal can be easily explained; the 16-time major champion was woefully out of form in the early stages of an injury-plagued 2016 campaign and he was out of gas last spring after winning Monte-Carlo, Barcelona, and Madrid in succession. Unfortunately for Thiem, who saw first-hand in Monte-Carlo, Nadal is having no such kind of issues this time around.
Pick: Nadal in 2 losing 5-7 games
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(7) John Isner vs. (2) Alexander Zverev
It will be a rematch of the Miami final when Zverev and Isner square off for the fifth time in their careers–and fifth time at a Masters 1000 tournament–on Friday. Zverev had been sweeping the head-to-head series 3-0 until Isner captured his biggest title with a 6-7(4), 6-4, 6-4 victory in Miami. Their only previous clay-court contest came last year in Rome, where the German won a semifinal affair 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-1 en route to his second-ever Masters 1000 triumph.
In typical Isner fashion, the ninth-ranked American has played five sets and five tiebreakers this week. He edged compatriot Ryan Harrison 7-6(1), 7-6(7) before getting the best of Pablo Cuevas 6-7(9), 7-6(3), 7-6(4). Zverev, on the other hand, coasted past Evgeny Donskoy and Leonardo Mayer in easy straight sets. Although Isner is serving up a storm in Madrid (54 aces, three double-faults through to matches), he has not generated a single break-point chance. He got away with it against Harrison and Cuevas, but that will not be good enough against the No. 2 seed and world No. 3.
Pick: Zverev in 3
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