The Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal, with a record of 22 Grand Slam titles, 14 of them at Roland Garros, will go in search of his first Masters from this Sunday in Turin, in the tournament that will bring together the eight best rackets of the year and will have two significant absences, those of the Murcian Carlos Alcaraz and the German Alexander Zverev.
The contest will be played starting this Sunday at the Pala Alpitour, in Turin, with capacity for 15,000 spectators, and will culminate on November 20 with the final, it will have an edition that will have prizes of 14,682,593 euros and will not feature Alcaraz, number one in the world, nor with Zverev, defender of the title, both due to injuries.
The contest will have eight tennis players divided into two zones of four each and after facing the other three rivals in their group, the best two will advance to the semifinals.
The Green Group will be made up of “Rafa” Nadal (2), the Norwegian Casper Ruud (4), the Canadian Félix Auger Aliassime (6) and the American Taylor Fritz (9).
In Nadal’s case, he will need to reach the final undefeated or win the title to outrank his compatriot Alcaraz and finish the year as world number one for the sixth time in his brilliant career.
Nadal, 36, wants to lift the only major trophy missing from his collection of 92 titles and claim world number one, but his mission will not be easy.
“Rafa” will debut this Sunday at 5:00 p.m. (Argentina time) against Fritz on ESPN television and the Star + platform, with a record of two Spanish victories, in the Acapulco 2020 final and this year at Wimbledon, and a of the North American, in the final of the Indian Wells Masters 1000, last March.
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The other singles match on the first day will be played from 10 a.m. and will be encouraged by Ruud and Auger Aliassime, with a 2-1 advantage for the Norwegian thanks to his victories in the Masters 1000 in Madrid 2021 and Canada 2022, and a defeat in Miami in 2019.
The Red Group, meanwhile, will be made up of the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas (3), the Serbian Novak Djokovic (8), five-time Masters champion, the last in 2015, and the Russians Daniil Medvedev (5) and Andrey Rublev (7). ).
As for the prizes, each tennis player is guaranteed the fixed sum of $320,000, while for each match won in the group stage they will accumulate an additional $383,000, while a victory in the semifinals will be awarded $1,070,000 and the victory in the final with 2,200,400.
So if an undefeated champion is established, he will pocket $4,740,000, which is the combined sum of what the Australian Open and the US Open shared in 2022.
The Masters will have an Argentine presence in the doubles draw with Horacio Zeballos from Mar del Plata together with his Catalan partner Marcel Granollers.
Zeballos and Grannollers will be in the Red Group with the couples made up of the American Rajeev Ram and the British Joe Salisbury; the Salvadoran Marcelo Arévalo and the Dutchman Jean-Julien Rojer and the British Lloyd Glasspool together with the Finn Harri Heliovaara (6).
The Argentine, 37, and the Catalan, 36 and close to retirement as he slipped as soon as he arrived in Turin, will debut on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. against the couple made up of Ram and Salisbury.
For its part, the Green Group will be made up of the following couples: Iván Dodig (Croatia) and Austin Krajicek (USA); Thanasi Kokkinakis and Nick Kyrgios (both from Australia); Wesley Kohlhof (Netherlands) and Neal Skupski (Great Britain) and Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic (both from Croatia).
As for the Argentine tennis players who ever won the Masters, only Guillermo Vilas did it in the 1974 edition played in Melbourne, Australia, and David Nalbandian in 2005 based in Shanghai, China.