{"id":102912,"date":"2025-05-04T09:44:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T07:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/draper-vs-ruud-una-final-en-el-nombre-de-rafa-nadal\/"},"modified":"2025-05-04T11:23:29","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T09:23:29","slug":"draper-vs-ruud-una-final-en-el-nombre-de-rafa-nadal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/draper-vs-ruud-una-final-en-el-nombre-de-rafa-nadal\/","title":{"rendered":"Draper vs. Ruud: a final in the spirit of Rafael Nadal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Destiny can be a fickle thing. At the first edition of the Mutua Madrid Open without Rafael Nadal, one of the men\u2019s finalists cut his teeth at the Rafa Nadal Academy and the other is the only left-handed player to reach the top five this century, other than the Mallorcan. Months after Nadal\u2019s retirement from tennis, his spirit can still be felt in the Caja Magica.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s grand finale at the Mutua Madrid Open will either crown Briton Jack Draper or Norway\u2019s Casper Ruud, two players who, although they were not among the favourites before the event, are more than worthy of a place in the title bout.<\/p>\n

The match will be a clash of styles: Draper, who will be the ATP No. 5 come Monday, had only won a handful of matches on clay in his entire career before he touched down in the Caja Magica a couple of weeks ago; Ruud, on the other hand, is one of the best clay players of recent years and no other player has more wins (124), finals (17) or titles (11) on the stuff since the 2020 season. No mean feat.<\/p>\n

Despite this huge difference in the two players\u2019 records, Draper is marginally favoured by the bookies. Apart from the fact that Ruud struggled with a niggle in his semifinal against Francisco Cer\u00fandolo, the 23-year-old Englishman has been one of the best players this season \u2013 champion of Indian Wells and second in the Race \u2013 and he has reached the final in Madrid without dropping a single set.<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralia was a crucial turning point for me at the beginning of the year. I was injured, not ready to hit the court and play, but having overcome three five-set matches before gave me confidence both physically and mentally to push myself to places I had never been before\u201d, said Draper, whose venture Down Under ended in a withdrawal against Carlos Alcaraz.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went from thinking I was weak, unable to stay in the game, to realizing that \u2018Wow, I\u2019m actually pretty strong\u2019. I do things in the gym, cycling, or running, I try to push myself to the limit because I know there will be moments like today’s match where it becomes very physical: if I have done all that work before, and I know I have, I feel more than prepared to go wherever I need to go\u201d, added Draper on Friday evening after his semi-final defeat of Lorenzo Musetti.<\/p>\n

Born on the same day as Draper \u2013 22 December \u2013 but three years earlier, Ruud will be playing his third Masters 1000 final in Madrid after those he lost in Miami in 2022 and Monte Carlo in 2024. \u201cLast year I reached the final in Monte Carlo playing really good tennis before that final and I ended up losing. Now I haven\u2019t played as well as in 2024, and I\u2019m in another final, so the context is a little different\u201d, explained Pedro Clar\u2019s understudy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t describe what\u2019s different now to last year. Hopefully this time I can win and it will be third time lucky. I\u2019ll do everything possible to get the title, of course, and I\u2019ll be ready and give my all to achieve it. But if I don\u2019t do it, it\u2019s fine, life goes on and I\u2019ll continue to be the same, in search of a big title in my career but, of course, I would love to get it on Sunday\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Destiny can be a fickle thing. At the first edition of the Mutua Madrid Open without Rafael Nadal, one of the men\u2019s finalists cut his teeth at the Rafa Nadal Academy and the other is the only left-handed player to reach the top five this century, other than the Mallorcan. Months after Nadal\u2019s retirement from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":102893,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[824],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-noticias-mutua-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102912"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102913,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102912\/revisions\/102913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}