MTO MVP of the match?

Damm hit in the back, Mensik in the foot.

Mensik had a foot infection and still hasn’t started his clay season. Madrid is an important tournament for him because it’s a Masters 1000 and he’s also defending points from last year’s quarterfinal. What reassures me about his foot injury is that he’s already entered in the Aix challenger; he’s not coming to Madrid just to test himself, he knows he’s fit and wants to play everywhere afterwards if possible. Getting going might be a bit tricky this week, but he’s lucky to be playing against a guy who isn’t a pure clay-courter, so I think it’s perfect to get started. With the quality of his serve he’ll be hard to break this week if he limits the double faults.

His opponent is also a big server: the American Damm is coming from the qualifiers and once again proves that Madrid is a surface apart. The tall left-hander with an aggressive game is on fire this week and extremely hard to break; he’s averaging about 1 ace per service game and attacks really hard, his high-risk game is dangerous for anyone in these conditions. We’re talking about a guy who came through qualifying and arrives full of confidence, Mensik will have to be very, very careful. The only negative point on Damm’s side is that he took an MTO for a lower back issue, that’s something to keep an eye on tomorrow and, for that reason, we’ll avoid handicaps on Mensik for example, just in case Damm were to retire.