Thanasi Kokkinakis successfully came through Madrid qualifying and will be part of the opening main-draw schedule on Wednesday. Kokkinakis will try to keep it going against Jack Draper, while Fabian Marozsan faces Aslan Karatsev.
(Q) Thanasi Kokkinakis vs. Jack Draper
Draper and Kokkinakis will be squaring off for the third time in their careers when they meet in round one of the Mutua Madrid Open on Wednesday. They have already faced each other once this season, when Kokkinakis won a 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-4 thriller on the hard courts of Los Cabos. That was preceded by another marathon match, in which Draper emerged victorious via a 6-7(6), 6-3, 7-6(4) decision last fall in Davis Cup.
Another good one should in the cards. Draper is the favorite on paper as the No. 43 player in the world, but Kokkinakis generally performs well on clay and is in great form right now. The 93rd-ranked Aussie won the Sarasota Challenger earlier this month and he qualified for the Madrid main draw by beating Gregoire Barrere and Dominic Thiem–dropping a total of eight games in the process. Draper produced a decent result in Munich (lost to Taylor Fritz in a third-set tiebreaker in the quarterfinals), but clay is the Brit’s worst surface and that may give an edge to a confident Kokkinakis.
Pick: Kokkinakis in 3
Aslan Karatsev vs. Fabian Marozsan
Marozsan can already be considered a Masters 1000 specialist in the relatively early stages of his career. The 37th-ranked Hungarian is 14-4 lifetime in the main draw at this level (16-4 if you include a pair of qualifying victories). That means more than half of his career ATP-level wins (24) have come in Masters 1000s. Marozsan famously upset Carlos Alcaraz en route to the 2023 Rome fourth round and his 2024 Sunshine Double featured a fourth-round performance in Indian Wells followed by a quarterfinal run in Miami.
Up first for Marozsan on Wednesday is Karatsev, for whom this year has been a much different story. The 48th-ranked Russian suffered a nasty knee injury in his very first match of the season after splitting sets with Jason Kubler in Brisbane. Karatsev has been sidelined ever since, so this marks his first appearance in more than three months. Adding insult to injury, the 30-year-old has to defend semifinal points after making an improbable run in Madrid as a qualifier last spring. Anything other than a straight-set success for Marozsan would be a big surprise.
Pick: Marozsan in 2
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haha, Karatsev is Russian.