Jannik Sinner queries schedule, surges into Madrid Open quarters

MADRID – Jannik Sinner suggested that the Madrid Open organisers should reconsider their tournament scheduling to avoid late-night finishes like the one Rafael Jodar experienced in the third round.

In a rare 11am start on April 28, the Italian moved past British 19th seed Cameron Norrie 6-2, 7-5 to reach the quarter-finals.

He explained he was put on first on Manolo Santana Stadium so that Jodar, his potential next opponent, would be scheduled in the afternoon to give the Spaniard time to recover from his three-set win over Joao Fonseca that ended at 1am on April 27 morning.

“It’s quite unusual for me,” Sinner, 24, told Tennis TV about his early kick-off.

“I don’t know the last time I played at 11. But for me, it doesn’t matter what time. I try to do my best. For me, there was a question if it would be me or Jodar to play at 4. But I think it’s right he plays at 4, because he finished very, very late.

“But at the same time, I feel like we need to make some adjustments to the scheduling of the day. Two matches (starting) from 8pm is very late.”

He added: “Even though you have one day in between, but still it’s very, very late. You finish at 1.30am and you need to eat, you need to have treatment, so it’s very late. But we try to adapt ourselves, our bodies, our minds, so from my side it was a good performance today.”

In his first-ever meeting with Norrie, Sinner won 81 per cent of his first-serve points and 63 per cent of the points behind his second delivery on his way to notching a 25th consecutive victory at the Masters 1000 level.

“We know each other quite well. We practised a lot in the last tournaments also. So we both knew what to expect. I was serving well today in the important moments,” said Sinner, who awaits 19-year-old Jodar in the quarter-finals.

The world No. 1 is just the second man in history to win his first 20 Masters 1000 matches of the season, joining Novak Djokovic who achieved that feat twice, in 2011 and 2015.

Sinner is competing in Madrid for just the fourth time in his career and is bidding to reach the semi-finals for the first time in the Spanish capital.

“This surface is very, very different than all the other surfaces, so it’s very tough to get the right feedback,” he added. “Sometimes you feel like you’re not playing your best but from the outside, it seems that you are and sometimes it’s also the opposite.

“But I’m very happy to be in the quarters again. It’s a tournament I haven’t played a lot, so it means a lot to me and I’m happy to be through in two sets.” AFP