It has been 14 years since Rafael Nadal first set foot on the hallowed grounds of the Monte-Carlo Country Club. A precocious 16 year old with immense promise, Nadal would notch his first Top 10 win over countryman Albert Costa in 2003, before falling to Guillermo Coria in the third round, but that was just the beginning of a reign that sent shockwaves throughout the ATP World Tour for years to come. The Spaniard would return to the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters two years later and proceeded to exact revenge on Coria in the final - his first of eight consecutive titles in the Principality. Nadal has fond memories from his tenure at the prestigious Masters 1000 event. "Everything was new...
The doubles field at this week’s Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters is not only stacked with all the top doubles players on the ATP World Tour, but also many of the world’s best singles players. Stan Wawrinka prevailed in his first-round match with Fabio Fognini on Sunday by ousting the veteran team of Max Mirnyi and Daniel Nestor 6-4, 7-6(2). Their path won’t get any easier as second seeds Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut await in the next round. Two-time Monte-Carlo singles champion Novak Djokovic teams up with fellow Serbian Viktor Troicki and will open against Gilles Muller and Gilles Simon. Djokovic/Troicki ousted Herbert/Mahut en route to a quarter-final finish last month at the BNP Paribas Open. Should they win their first...
Looking at his FedEx ATP Win/Loss Record, it'd be easy to assume Andy Murray started feeling more comfortable on clay last year, when the Scot won a personal-best 18 matches and lost only three on the red dirt. But on day one of the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters, the Scot said his successful transformation into one of the best clay-court players actually began in 2015. Two years ago, Murray had never won a clay-court event. But that year he set a goal to take home a clay-court title and he arranged his schedule to help make it happen. For the first time, Murray entered a smaller clay-court tournament, the BMW Open by FWU in Munich, an ATP World Tour 250 event....
Rafael Nadal will have two championship themes on his mind when the clay swing heats up in Monte-Carlo, beginning on Sunday: the opportunity to win three tournaments for a record 10th time in his career, and the chance to catch Roger Federer and take over the No. 1 spot in the Emirates ATP Race To London. Nadal, who's climbed to No. 2 in the Race with final runs in Australia and Miami, can't catch Federer at the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters, the season's first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 clay court tournament. But another crown in the Principality – and the 1,000 Race points that come with it – would go a long way towards pushing the Spaniard ahead of the Swiss. The...
Rafael Nadal has a tough task if he is to lift an incredible 10th trophy at the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters, following the 2017 draw ceremony at the Jardin Exotique on Friday. The Spanish star, who is vying to capture a record 50th clay-court career crown, has been drawn in the same half as two-time former titlist Novak Djokovic, Dominic Thiem and Grigor Dimitrov. Nadal, who will meet Daniel Evans or Kyle Edmund in the second round, could face No. 14 seed Alexander Zverev in the third round, prior to a quarter-final against No. 8 seed Dimitrov. Nadal overcame Zverev in five sets in the Australian Open third round in January, while he has an 8-1 FedEx ATP Head2Head record against...