RAFAEL Nadal stretched his winning run on clay to 15-0 when he beat Austria’s Dominic Thiem 7-6 (8), 6-4 in yesterday’s final of the Mutua Madrid Open in La Caja Mágica.
It was a fifth Madrid title for the 30-year-old and a record-equalling 30th ATP World Tour Masters 1000 crown, matching Novak Djokovic for the all-time lead. The Spaniard is expected to climb to No 4 in the new world rankings issued today.
Nadal has now won three consecutive titles, with the previous two coming in the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters and the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell. He has dropped only two of the 32 sets he has played on clay this year.
Thiem, 23, was playing in his first Masters 1000 final but broke first for a 2-1 lead in the first set as he dictated play from the middle of the court. But Nadal found his way into the contest and levelled the first set at 3-3.
Neither player broke again in the first set, which duly went to a tie-break, in which Nadal claimed victory when Thiem sent a forehand long.
Nadal broke in the first game of the second set but Thiem fought to the end.
At the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome, Britain’s Dan Evans fell to a straight sets-defeat to Jiri Vesely in the first round. The Czech needed only one hour and 16 minutes to run out a comfortable 6-3, 6-1 winner and bridge a gap of five places in the world rankings.
World No 58 Evans had chances to break and recover from a difficult start at 4-1 down in the first set, but Vesely showed his fighting spirit by saving every one of Evans’s eight break points in the contest.
Aljaz Bedene booked his place in the first round by beating Argentina’s Renzo Olivo in straight sets. Having already dispatched Lukas Lacko in the first qualifying round, the British No 3 went on to beat Vesely 6-3, 6-4 and join Andy Murray and Kyle Edmund in the main draw.
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