Juan Martin del Potro is playing in his eighth BNP Paribas Open. But to Del Potro, some things are always the same in Indian Wells. For instance, his draw. Every year, Del Potro said on Wednesday, he has the toughest draw. He doesn't even need to look at the other sections of the field. He just finds his name, and he knows – yep, that's the hardest part of the whole tournament. “Always. It doesn't change. That's the draw, what I expect for sure,” Del Potro said during his pre-tournament press conference. That was, without a doubt, the case last year in Indian Wells, when the Argentine, then the 31st seed, was drawn in the same quarter as second seed...
Is it possible to move from outside the Top 1,000 into the Top 10 in just two years? Yes. Juan Martin del Potro just did it. The Tower of Tandil was ranked No. 1,042 in the ATP Rankings in February 2016. Skip forward two years and he was ranked No. 9 on 26 February, and he's up to No. 8 this week after winning the Abierto Mexicano Telcel presentado por HSBC in Acapulco on Saturday. You would naturally think that Del Potro’s magical run, cutting his ranking from four digits down to just one in such a short period of time, was predicated on creating lop-sided win percentages. It wasn’t. [ALSO LIKE] An Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers analysis uncovered...
Juan Martin del Potro’s victory over World No. 8 Kevin Anderson in the Abierto Mexicano Telcel presentado por HSBC final is noteworthy for many reasons. It is the seventh time the Argentine has beaten a Top 10 player in a tour-level final. The win also completes a week in which he beat three Top 8 players — the last time anyone has done that at an ATP World Tour event outside of the Nitto ATP Finals was when Grigor Dimitrov raised the trophy in Brisbane last January. But Del Potro, who will return to No. 8 in the ATP Rankings for the first time since 2 August 2014 on Monday thanks to his first ATP World Tour 500-level triumph since...
Watch highlights as Juan Martin del Potro beats Kevin Anderson to win the Abierto Mexicano Telcel presentado por HSBC title in Acapulco. Watch live tennis at tennistv.com. Hector Vivas/Getty Images photo.