TennisSection previews the 2021 Madrid Open as Daniil Medvedev (2) meets Cristian Garin (16) in the Round of 16 on Thursday May 6th, 2021.
An interesting match is upon us here at the 2021 Madrid Open. Second seed and world number three Daniil Medvedev will face sixteenth seeded Christian Garin of Chile in what is expected to be a tight Round of 16 match. Can Daniil Medvedev get another win on this surface? Or will highly-rated clay court player Garin advance to the Quarter-Finals here in Madrid?
Daniil Medvedev is currently ranked #3 in the ATP world rankings and is seeded second here at the 2021 Madrid Open. The Russian star has had a strong season so far in 2021, and has established himself as one of the best players in the world. However, he has never been comfortable on clay and has a very poor record on the surface throughout his career. After a string of 8 successive defeats in the bigger clay tournaments, he finally broke the streak with a hard-fought three set win over Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. While the match wasn’t pretty, he will have been relieved to have finally registered a win and will be hoping that his luck will change as he heads into Roland Garros. Unfortunately, he runs into one of the best clay-court players in the world in Cristian Garin and enters as the underdog, despite the higher ranking.
Cristian Garin is currently the world number #25, and is widely known as one of the best young players in world tennis. He goes one step further on this surface, and is recognized as an elite clay court player with five career titles on the surface. Despite his tremendous clay court record, he has traditionally struggled at the ATP-1000 events, and will be hoping to end that streak here. The Chilean was impressive in his straight sets win over Dominik Koepfer, dominating from the baseline and serving well. If he can maintain that form, he should be considered as the slight favorite here against Daniil Medvedev, and will be very confident of advancing here at the 2021 Madrid Open.
This will be the second time the two players have faced each other on the ATP Tour, with Daniil Medvedev leading the head to head 1-0. The two last played in 2019 in Montreal, but that was on a hard court where Medvedev won 6-3, 6-3. While the Russian is ranked much higher, he has had nowhere near the clay court success that Cristian Garin has in his career. The fact that Garin has struggled at the bigger events will give Medvedev some hope, but I think that it is unlikely that anything other than a win for the Chilean will happen here. Daniil Medvedev is one of the best players in the world and cannot be completely counted out, but expect Cristian Garin to get the win here and advance to the Quarter-Finals here at the 2021 Madrid Open.
Free Tennis Pick and Prediction: Cristian Garin to win.
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