Clay court season is here. This week the first clay tournaments of the spring will be held in Estoril, Marrakech and Houston, although the main event will not come until this Sunday, when the tournament begins. Monte Carlo Masters 1000.
The Monegasque tournament will see the best tennis players on the planet in action, with Novak Djokovic, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz on the head. However, as the days passed, absences became known, some of them significant.
The first of them was that of Tommy Paul. The American tennis player was forced to withdraw from the Miami Open after sustaining an injury in his second round match that also prevented him from playing in Monte Carlo.
Unfortunately, Paul is not the only celebrity absentee. This Wednesday announced the loss of Marin Cilic. whose physical problems have kept him away from the courts since mid-February, when he fell in the first round of the tournament in Buenos Aires.
The Croatian, number 1056 in the world, entered the main draw thanks to the protected ranking, no Rafael Nadalwhich is now unknown in the contest.
The fact that he hasn’t published any photos or videos of himself training for ten days. on his social networks raised serious doubts about his participation in Monte Carlo.
In any case, the decision should have been forthcoming since then In the next few hours I must travel to Monaco to start acclimatizing to the conditions of their slopes.
In addition to the presence or absence of Rafa Nadal, the incentives in Monte Carlo have multiplied. To the excellent state of form of Jannik Sinner and his growing rivalry with Carlos Alcaraz – which removed him from the second step of the world ranking – added the surprising moment of Grigor Dimitrov and the unknown seeded by the number first Novak in his last appearance Djokovic.
The Serbian tops the list with 9,725 points, followed, both by a fist, by Sinner with 8,710 and Alcaraz with 8,645. The five major clay tournaments ahead offer plenty of combinations for those positions to vary, but it’s likely that the new number one, if any, will be decided at Roland Garros. All three have options to leave Paris in that position.
Djokovic, current champion at Roland Garros, will defend 2,315 points in the clay season and the Italian, 585. The sinner fell in the second round in Paris in 2023, so it will be difficult for him not to improve on that result.
The list of upcoming clay tournaments includes two more Masters 1,000s before Roland Garros (Madrid and Rome) and each of them will be important for qualification.
Alcaraz won both Barcelona (500 points) and Madrid (1,000) in 2023, He lost in the round of 32 in Rome (45) and in the semifinals at Roland Garros (720). A defense for the Spaniard of 2,265 points, which puts him at a disadvantage compared to Sinner.
Source: La Verdad
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