Viva Espana! - Madrid Masters 2007

[davis]

The second-to-last Master Series Event is coming up. No big deeds to be expected from Marat (his own words, not mine ) but good matches will be guaranteed: With the exception of Andy Roddick the entire Top 10 will be playing.

MUTUA MADRILENA MASTERS MADRID
MADRID, SPAIN
15–21 OCTOBER, 2007
Prize Money: EURO 2,082,500 (EURO 1,870,000)
48 DRAW (the Top 16 have a Bye in the 1st round)

SITE: MADRID ARENA
RECINTO FERIAL CASA DE CAMPO
28011 MADRID

WEB SITE: www.tennis-masters-madrid.com//eng/index.htm

Qualifying draw: Friday, October 12, 2007, 9:00 p.m.
Main draw: Sunday, October 14, 2007, Noon
Doubles draw: Saturday, October 13, 6:00 p.m.

ATP Ranking Points/ATP Race Points
W: 500/100
F: 350/70
SF: 225/45
QF: 125/25
R16: 75/15
R32: 35/7 (Seeds: 5/1)
R64: 5/1 (WC: 0/0)
Q: +15/+3
Q12: 8/0
Q24: 0/0

Entry deadline: September 3, 2007
Seeding: October 8, 2007

[davis]

Interesting way of giving out WC ;D:

Lopez gets the Madrid wildcard that is determined by reader voting in Spanish newspaper Marca. The candidates were Lopez, Santoro, Lee, and Gulbis.

[Alya10]

Ah! Here it is the Madrid thread!
Only thought about it today ;D

[Dina]

when is the draw?

[davis]

dina said:

when is the draw?

Draw is in my first post. Marat plays Karlovic first

[Dina]

That's what I can call a splendid draw!!!!!
whatever!
danke Annette of course!

[arwen21]

I have tickets for all the week!!!! hope he wins karlovic!!!!!

[Alya10]

OOP for tomorrow.
Obviously Marat isn't on it

Some interesting matches and for those who are going to be there, there is the added pleasure of Guga Kuerten playing doubles with Carlos Moyà ;D



p.s. Mario is back

[maryb]

I read that the Madrid Masters was next week - that was why I was putting in for a week's holiday next week to watch it! Bugger! They got the dates wrong! Maybe I'll ask for a few days this week ...)

Karlovic?? Keep making the angles (you know how to play at the net now ;D) - and do your best to get that serve back. You can do it Big Yin.

Andy v Stepanek first round. Hmm. Well, if it's the third match, I should get to see it after work.

[Anne]

www.mutuamad-mastersmadrid.com//pdf/ordendejuego/2007/16/OP.pdf (=OOP)

Marat plays Karlovic as second on Central Court after a start at 11.00 am! Good luck Marat! We love you !

ps.. any live (free) streams?? Hope so, thx in advance!

[davis]

"Perfect" timing - good to see that they let First Round Doubles play during Prime Time in the late afternoon... Guess I have to live with the match summary.

Anne, BWIN offers live stream. You have to open an account with them but you don't have to bet - which means you get your money back when you close the account. But of course it's registration hassle and you need a credit card.

You can also install Sopcast or TVU, they might work.

Apart from that I know only of ATP Masters Series TV (my favorite channel ;D) but that costs money for the subscription.

Check these links for live streams in general:
www.tennisform.com/ (upper left corner gives live stream info)
www.myp2p.eu/Other.htm (all sports live streams daily)


Monday, October 15, 2007
Singles - First Round Results
J Monaco (ARG) d I Andreev (RUS) 67(5) 60 64
[WC] J Del Potro (ARG) d P Starace (ITA) 75 61
[Q] S Koubek (AUT) d J Nieminen (FIN) 63 36 64
[Q] R Ginepri (USA) d J Melzer (AUT) 26 76(2) 64
M Ancic (CRO) d [Q] M Gicquel (FRA) 64 62 ;D ;D ;D
A Murray (GBR) d R Stepanek (CZE) 64 61 ;D
M Baghdatis (CYP) d [Q] A Pavel (ROU) 63 46 61
[WC] F Lopez (ESP) d F Volandri (ITA) 63 62
F Verdasco (ESP) d [WC] A Montanes (ESP) 61 61

[Annie]

Good luck for today Marat I will be at work staring at SB...or maybe even just check the final result Much healthier this way ;D

[davis]

The unavoidable Steve Tignos is back - and boring this time since he picked the Top 4 seeds as semi-finalists...

Madrid Musings
Posted 10/15/2007 @ 1 :03 PM

The wilderness weeks are over. Since the U.S. Open just one month ago, the tours have scattered themselves over the globe—in that time, the men have traveled to nine cities, the women 13—but aside from Davis and Fed Cup there hasn’t been anything you could say was essential viewing.

Essential viewing begins again Monday when the men—including Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic—arrive in Madrid for the seventh Masters event of the season. Virtually everyone else is there as well; the only annoying pullouts came from Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt at the last minute. The players with the most on the line here will be Shanghai hopefuls David Ferrer, Fernando Gonzalez, Tommy Robredo, James Blake, Richard Gasquet, Tomas Berdych, and Tommy Haas. They’re fighting for the three remaining spots in the eight-man, season-ending Masters Cup. (The list above is roughly the order they stand in right now.)

There’s also interest at the summit. Nadal and Djokovic, rivals for No. 2 in the world, are positioned to play in the semifinals, while Federer says he is hoping to rekindle his rivalry with Rafa in the final. Funny how much Sire Jacket likes his old tormentor these days.

First Quarter
Federer has played just once since the Open, winning two singles matches against the Czech Republic in a losing effort for Switzerland’s Davis Cup team. He begins his title defense here against Robby Ginepri, who had a decent win over Jurgen Melzer today. We know Federer is not the fastest starter at these events—Guillermo Cañas caught him in his first match in Indian Wells in March—and Ginepri has played him well in the past by not overreacting and going for too much. I’m thinking two close sets.
Beyond that are possible grind-outs against Cañas in the third round and Ferrer in the fourth. The latter is playing well enough these days to make it competitive. Fed is 7-0 against him, but Ferrer took a set the last time they played, on clay in Hamburg in the spring.
Semifinalist: Roger Federer

Second Quarter
The top seeds here are Nikolay Davydenko and Gonzalez. Davydenko is 1-3 in Madrid lifetime; Gonzalez made the final last year. After a hot start to the season, he’s been up and down at best over the last four months. Now he’s got some points to defend if he’s going to ensure that he ends the year in Shanghai. Gonzalez is slated to play Haas, another Shanghai contender (and Madrid winner way back in 2001), in the third round. That is, if Haas can get past Juan Monaco, which is no sure thing. The Argentine was impressively hard-headed in coming back from a set down to beat Igor Andreev today.
Davydenko will get the winner of the giants, Ivo Karlovic and Marat Safin, in his first match, then perhaps Mikhail Youzhny or Stanislas Wawrinka, who reached the final in Vienna last week. Your guess is as good as mine as to who is going to emerge from all this, but I don’t think it’s going to be Gonzalez. Perhaps telling: Davydenko has never lost to Youzhny, and is 3-1 against Haas.
Semifinalist: Nikolay Davydenko

Third Quarter
There are some marquee possibilities in this section. Blake is coming off a semifinal performance in Stockholm; Djokovic just won Vienna; Gasquet played two finals in a row recently. Does that mean anything? Not really, now that I think about it—the Masters, like the Slams, are a different breed of event, where the results of the previous week don’t necessarily apply. Blake won Stockholm last year, then came out and lost his first match in Madrid. Everyone’s dangerous at a tournament like this, including a guy like Mario Ancic, who just came back to the tour after an injury and could face Blake in the second round.
If the seeds do hold, Blake would play Gasquet and Djokovic would face Moya. In the end, I don’t see Djokovic having much trouble reaching the semis. Except for a likely tank in Cincinnati, he’s been consistently solid in Masters events this year, winning two and reaching the final of another.
Semifinalist: Novak Djokovic

Fourth Quarter
This is home-country hero Nadal’s section to lose. The Spaniard rode the local support to the title in Madrid in 2005, but he may be rusty. He hasn’t played at all since the Open, when he went out with a bum knee. There are also a couple potential obstacles here. Nadal's first opponent will be Marcos Baghdatis; he's 3-0 against him, but the Bag man won his first set this year in Dubai. Nadal then might have to get by Andy Murray, who gave him all sorts of trouble in Melbourne in January. Finally, Tomas Berdych could be waiting in the quarters. The Czech beat Nadal in an nasty match in the same round in 2006.
The other side at least one interesting second-rounder, between Robredo and teen giant Juan Martin Del Potro. The big guy has been looking for a major scalp. He’ll at least get a chance to hit his shots and control the action against the Spaniard.
Semifinalist: Rafael Nadal

I know, I’ve picked the four top seeds to reach the semis, a definite faux pas in the cutthroat world of snap predictions. Let me know what dark horses I missed, and I’ll be back in a couple days to talk about how it's all progressing.

[Anne]

davis said:

"Perfect" timing - good to see that they let First Round Doubles play during Prime Time in the late afternoon... Guess I have to live with the match summary.

Anne, BWIN offers live stream. You have to open an account with them but you don't have to bet - which means you get your money back when you close the account. But of course it's registration hassle and you need a credit card.

You can also install Sopcast or TVU, they might work.

Apart from that I know only of ATP Masters Series TV (my favorite channel ;D) but that costs money for the subscription.

Check these links for live streams in general:
www.tennisform.com/ (upper left corner gives live stream info)
www.myp2p.eu/Other.htm (all sports live streams daily)

Thanks Davis! I'll just try them !

[davis]

Karlovic - Safin 64 64

I had the “dubious” honour of watching the match.
If one wants to see things positively… Well, I’ve seen him play worse. His service was pretty good – except in the first service games of each set. No idea what hit him there, that was pure carelessness! He seemed more agile than during the summer, i.e. faster on the court, and the UEs were not too high.

Now to the negative sides: His forehand and his return game need some serious work-over. And why didn’t he go to the net more? The few times he tried he was successful (11 out of 13!)…

Let’s hope he takes it as a learning experience. Now you can go back to Russia and make me happy in St. Petersburg, please.