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Madrid Open - 05/02

Tie-BreakfastMay 2May 2, 20264 min

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Today is Saturday, May 2, in Madrid it's 08:30 and it's 15 degrees. OK, let's go.

On the menu today

🇮🇹 Sinner dispatches Fils 6-2 6-4 and reaches his fifth straight Masters 1000 final
🇩🇪 Zverev sees off Blockx 6-2 7-5: Sunday's rematch with Jannik is on
🇮🇹 Sinner joins the club of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic: a final at all nine 1000s
🇷🇺 Andreeva faces Kostyuk for her first Madrid title

WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY:

🇮🇹 Sinner Dispatches Fils And Lands His Fifth Straight 1000 Final

Jannik Sinner beat Arthur Fils 6-2 6-4 in an hour and twenty-five on the Manolo Santana, without conceding a single break point all match and dropping just three of the twenty-four points he played behind his first serve. It is the three-hundred-and-fiftieth tour-level win of his career, reached at the fastest pace ever for a player born in the 2000s, and with this victory Jannik becomes the fourth man to reach a final at all nine Masters 1000s of the season, after Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.

More than the scoreline, what stays from this match is the way Sinner stripped Fils of the few footholds the Frenchman had built up in recent weeks: the twenty-three rallies of the first hour were almost all played within Jannik's parameters, and whenever Fils tried to extend the point, an over-the-top reply usually came back. The feeling, looking back, is that the streak he has been walking on since the start of the year is starting to take on contours that until recently seemed off-scale even for him.

🇩🇪 Zverev Sees Off Blockx And Sets Up The Rematch With Sinner

Alexander Zverev beat Alexander Blockx 6-2 7-5 in an hour and thirty-five, claiming his first final of the season and his fourth in Madrid. He is only the third player in history to reach four finals at the Spanish Masters 1000, alongside Federer and Nadal, and he is now up to thirty match wins at the tournament. The first set was one-way traffic, the second came alive at 5-5 with Blockx finding a way to stay in touch all the way to the closing game.

What stands out, watching Sascha over these two weeks, is the ease with which he has held his serve level even when the draw has thrown very different opponents at him. For Blockx the week closes as a virtual world No. 35, and you sense, listening to him after the match, that the leap from his first Top 100 in Monte-Carlo to this semifinal happened on a timeline he himself still struggles to line up. Tomorrow against Sinner the gap on paper is crystal clear, but rematches at this height of the calendar often tell a story the prediction can't see.

WHAT'S HAPPENING TODAY:

Andreeva vs Kostyuk (WTA, final) - On the Manolo Santana at 17:00. First Madrid final for both, in a duel nobody had on their bracket at the start of the week: Andreeva is chasing the third 1000 title of her career and has put together twelve wins on clay in 2026, the highest tally on tour; Kostyuk arrives still unbeaten on the dirt, ten consecutive tour-level wins, after going past Noskova and Potapova without flinching. Their only previous meeting is the Brisbane quarterfinal in January, won by the Ukrainian 7-6(7) 6-3, but on a surface that has almost nothing in common with Madrid.
Men's doubles (final) - Andreozzi/Guinard vs Heliovaara/Patten on the Manolo Santana at 14:00. A day on which the men's singles takes a pause, while we wait for tomorrow's final between Sinner and Zverev.