Who could have imagined that Jan-Lennard Struff would reach the Mutua Madrid Open final? His ranking meant he had to earn a place in the main draw through qualifying, where he was not one of the favourites this year.<\/p>\n
The German fell at the final hurdle in qualies<\/em> but, thanks to a last minute withdrawal, he was added to the main draw and has now become the first lucky loser to reach the final of a Masters 1000 tournament since the creation of the category in 1990.<\/p>\n These are the secrets to the German\u2019s astonishing campaign in the Spanish capital.<\/p>\n Consistent serving<\/strong><\/p>\n Struff took confidence in the Spanish capital from the shot that starts every point: he has won 81 of his 88 service games (92%), saving 30 break points out of 37 (81%) and producing 62 aces.<\/p>\n Digging deep<\/strong><\/p>\n Of his six matches in the main draw, Struff needed a third set in five. In three of them, the German had to mount a comeback: against Ben Shelton in the second round (4-6, 7-6[4], 7-5), Dusan Lajovic in the third (6-7[2], 6-3, 6-3) and Aslan Karatsev in the semis (4-6, 6-3, 6-4).<\/p>\n Marathon after marathon<\/strong><\/p>\n Struff invested 13 hours and two minutes into his six matches to reach his first Masters 1000 semi-final. Only his opener clocked in at under two hours, against Italian player Lorenzo Sonego (74 minutes) and his longest encounter came in the quarter-finals against Stefanos Tsitsipas (two and a half hours).<\/p>\n Unfazed<\/strong><\/p>\n Struff arrived in Madrid as the world No. 65 and he outfoxed four higher-ranked players: Sonego (47), Shelton (38), Lajovic (40) and Tsitsipas (5). Only Pedro Cach\u00edn (67) and Karatsev (121) are below him in the ATP Rankings.<\/p>\n A chance to make history<\/strong><\/p>\n If he manages to lift the title in the Manolo Santana Stadium on Sunday, Struff will be the first lucky loser to claim a Masters 1000 title. However, four players have achieved the feat at events in lower categories: Leonardo Mayer in Hamburg (2017), Andrey Rublev in Umag (2017), Marco Cecchinato in Budapest (2018) and Soonwoo Kwon in Adelaide (2023).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who could have imagined that Jan-Lennard Struff would reach the Mutua Madrid Open final? His ranking meant he had to earn a place in the main draw through qualifying, where he was not one of the favourites this year. The German fell at the final hurdle in qualies but, thanks to a last minute withdrawal, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":86762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[875,838,824,999],"tags":[835,825,1018,831,686],"class_list":["post-86631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mutua-news-en","category-noticias-tenis-masculino-en","category-noticias-mutua-en","category-tennis-en","tag-2023-es-en","tag-atp-en-2","tag-jan-lennard-struff-en","tag-mutua-madrid-open-en-2","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86631","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86631"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86734,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86631\/revisions\/86734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}