History… The tournament has a rich history dating back from 1897 and it is one of the 3 Masters Series events played on Clay before the culmination which is Roland Garros.

Rafael Nadal is the absolute king here, having won 8 consecutive titles 2005-2012,and 11 in total.

Tournament wasn’t played last year due to the Covid pandemic

In the most recent event, Fabio Fognini took away the title in 2019 beating Nadal in the ¼ final  and the surprising finalist Dusan Lajovic, who on other hand beat Medvedev in the Semi-Final

Favourites/Top Seeds…. As always, the draw is packed with the best of the best. Except Thiеm and Federer all other 8 players from top 10 are here and all 16 seeds are within top 20 of the Rankings.

Novak Djokovic is the top seed, while he continues to add to the record of weeks being No.1 in the Rankings and Daniil Medvedev is the 2^nd with Rafael Nadaл coming in 3^rd and Stefanos Tsitsipas 4^th.

Medvedev, despite being 2^nd in the world, has had a disastrous Clay court past and the last time he won a match on the red turf was in Barcelona in 2019. Last year he lost all 5 first round matches despite being a overwhelming favorite in most of them. The Russian can definitely challenge Novak for the top spot in the Rankings if he can somehow discover some sort of form on the clay and especially on the French Open where he has failed to won a match from 4 attempts.

As previously mentioned, Nadal is the man to beat here, boosting an out of this world 73-5 record in this venue, he falls into Daniil Medvedev’s side of the draw, but would love to see a matchup between him and Rublev in the 4^th round that’s for sure. The Russian hasn’t stopped improving and now being part of the top 10 would be a good test for both of them

Underdogs/Dark Horses…

Really hard to pick underdogs or dark horses in such even and packed draw as this one and I will be more interested to see what the finalists from Miami Open Hurkacz and Sinner will do here, how their transition goes and if they can improve on their already big accomplishment in the US.

Notable R1 matchups…

Felix Auger Aliassime v Cristian Garin – Not often you can see No.22 and 20 go up against each other in the 1^st round and that’s exactly what we have in store here. Felix for sure will have the spotlight for the future, not only for his play and being a next gen star, but now he will be coached by Toni Nadal, Rafael’s uncle and longtime ex-coach. Is Toni the spark Felix needs to be better all-around and especially on clay where he beat only Sonego from the 3 tournaments on clay he played last year? Garin is the typical clay courter, and he won a title this year – on home soil in Santiago in March and has gathered points mostly on red clay so a hard-fought matchup is expected for sure. The h2h is 1-1 both matches on clay 2 years ago.

Grigor Dimitrov v Jan-Lennard Struff – Always an interesting encounter between these two.  H2H stands at 2-2 and they have exchanged wins in Monte Carlo. recover deleted audio files from android phone Struff’s clay court year has already started, as he was eliminated by Basilashvili in the ¼ finals in Cagliari while Grigor has not played since losing in R1 in Miami to Norrie. command to recover shortcut files in pendrive The Bulgarian has lost to Nadal each time in last 2 appearances in Monaco, in the Semis in 2018 and in 3^rd round in 2019 while Struff hasn’t been able to book a place in QF yet from his previous 6 appearances. The German always seems to give hard time to Dimitrov so I am fully expecting a close encounter once again In this slow conditions