After escaping Emil Ruusuvuori in a three-set comeback to begin his title defence at the Mutua Madrid Open, Carlos Alcaraz advanced to the last 16 with a thoroughly entertaining win on Sunday against Grigor Dimitrov. In a 6-2, 7-5 victory, the stylish Alcaraz imposed his athletic game to make a fast start then showed his grit to instantly recover a break in the second set.

He will next face Alexander Zverev in a rematch of last year’s Madrid final, won by Alcaraz in straight sets. Zverev leads the ATP Head2Head 3-1, including a win in their most recent meeting in last year’s Roland Garros quarter-finals.

“I really want to play that match. We played a few times, head-to-head he is up,” Alcaraz said of the showdown encounter. “I really want to show my great level here in front of my home crowd. I have great memories from last year in the final but obviously I have to be really focussed in that match. I know that Sascha is a really good player, a really aggressive one with good serves. I have to show all my skills.”

Alcaraz is seeking to complete the Barcelona-Madrid double for the second straight season after retaining the title at the Barcelona ATP 500 last Sunday. He has won 17 straight matches on Spanish soil across four campaigns and must push that number to 21 to earn the title in Madrid.

Picking up where he left off in closing out Ruusuvuori, Alcaraz used his all-action game to take command against Dimitrov in a one-sided opening set on Manolo Santana stadium.

Alcaraz spoke before the tournament about feeling motivation rather than pressure from the expectant Spanish crowd, and he showed it by playing freely against the Bulgarian. A highlight moment came early on when he brandished his racquet like a magic wand, feigning a cross-court slice before lifting a down-the-line pass beyond his stranded opponent.

Alcaraz continued to thrill his home crowd throughout the match, with the aggressive Dimitrov playing his part by forcing the Spaniard to rely on his world-class speed and defensive skills. The top seed kept a smile on his face throughout the 90-minute contest and raced through the finish line by winning five of the last six games.

THAT. IS. A. STEAL‼️@carlosalcaraz 👏

Today vs Dimitrov 45% (21/47)
Alcaraz avg. 39%
Tour avg. 32%#StealScore calculates how often a player has won the point when they are in defence during the point.#TennisInsights | @atptour |… https://t.co/04DJbMHFig

— Tennis Insights (@tennis_insights) April 30, 2023

The opponents are good friends and have practised together this week in Madrid, an experience Alcaraz said helped him fine-tune his tactics.

“When we practised, it helped me a lot in the tactical game, what I had to do,” he said. “Obviously I was focussed on myself all the time, trying to hit the ball really clear and with a lot of power. That was the goal at the beginning of the match, trying to play aggressive all the time.”

Dimitrov was seeking to repeat his heroics from 2013 in Madrid, when he beat then-World No. 1 Novak Djokovic for his biggest win. He was denied a fourth win against a Top 2 opponent and stopped two rounds short of matching his Madrid quarter-final run from 2015.

Marcelo Arevalo and Jean-Julien Rojer overcame Americans Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe 6-3, 6-4 at the Mutua Madrid Open to reach their fifth tour-level quarter-final of the season.

Chasing their third tour-level title this year, the fourth seeds won 90 per cent (28/31) of their first-serve points to move past the Top 15 singles stars and improve to 14-6 as a team on clay. Arevalo and Rojer, who triumphed at Roland Garros last season, will next face Felix Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov.

The Canadians, who advanced to the last eight in Indian Wells, downed sixth seeds Lloyd Glasspool and Harri Heliovaara 6-4, 6-2.

In other action, Jamie Murray and Michael Venus defeated Nathaniel Lammons and Jackson Withrow 3-6, 6-3, 10-4 in one hour and 21 minutes. Murray and Venus have now won six consecutive matches after lifting the trophy in Banja Luka last week.

Eighth seeds Santiago Gonzalez and Edouard Roger-Vasselin also advanced, defeating Hugo Nys and Jan Zielinski 6-4, 6-2.

Alexander Zverev continued his love affair with the Mutua Madrid Open on Sunday when he wasted little time in reaching the fourth round. The German overpowered French qualifier Hugo Grenier 6-1, 6-0 in 55 minutes.

Zverev survived an opening-round scare against Roberto Carballes Baena but faced no such problems against Grenier. He struck 26 winners, won 86 per cent (17/20) of net points and broke Grenier’s serve six times to earn his 12th win of the season.

“Today I felt great,” Zverev said. “Maybe Hugo was a bit nervous, first time in the third round at a [ATP] Masters [1000] and that is big for any player. In general I am happy that I kept my composure and that I am through.”

The 13th seed has often produced his best level on the Madrid clay, holding a 21-3 record at the ATP Masters 1000 event. He has reached at least the quarter-finals in all five of his previous appearances, lifting the trophy in 2018 and 2021.

Zverev will continue the quest for his first tour-level title of the season when he takes on top seed Carlos Alcaraz or Grigor Dimitrov in the fourth round.

“Both of those players are great players,” Zverev said when asked about playing Alcaraz or Dimitrov in the fourth round. “It is going to be difficult no matter who it is against. Of course with Carlos that would be a matchup people would look forward to. We played in the final here last year, played a massive match at [Roland Garros] before I got injured.”

The 27-year-old Grenier was making his ATP Masters 1000 debut and earned upset wins against Diego Schwartzman and Sebastian Korda to reach the third round. The Frenchman is up nine places to No. 119 in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings.

Players on the ATP Challenger Tour often carry impactful stories that go relatively untold.

Such is the case with Belgian Zizou Bergs, who has been donating tennis equipment to the African country Burundi for eight years. A five-time Challenger Tour champion, the 23-year-old recently triumphed at the Tallahassee Challenger just a few weeks after his grandfather passed away. Bergs’ life off the court is a story within itself.

Following an eye-opening trip to Burundi at age 15, the Belgian No. 2 quickly developed a contact, Marcel Van der Haegen, in the East African country and has since donated tennis clothes and equipment.

“I still have that project going on,” Bergs told ATPTour.com. “We’re not always aware about it, but you have so much and sometimes feel like you have little. You grow up in a very good culture, in a very good country and you think everything is quite normal that you have all these clothes, shoes, racquets, you can string whenever you want, get great food at the table every day. That is not common [there], it really opened my eyes. They would play with my [stuff], even if it was like five sizes too big, they would still play with it. That really touched me.”

Earlier this month, Burundi hosted an ITF Women’s 25K event. Bergs received word from a friend at the tournament that while she was there, she noticed several guys around the capital city Bujumbura who were wearing his clothes and playing with the racquets he’s donated over the years.

“That was heartwarming that they’re so grateful for that,” Bergs said. “I definitely have enough clothes to keep sending them every year. At a certain point, Yonex [started] helping us too. We’re definitely grateful that Yonex is also willing to support me and the project I have, even though it’s very small. It’s important to me that it’s not only taking, because tennis has given me a lot. It’s giving back and I really like that in this project.”

This season has been bittersweet for Bergs. The first two months of the year, the Lommel native qualified for the Australian Open and reached a career-high No. 112. Last week, Bergs triumphed at the Tallahassee Challenger, where he didn’t drop a set en route to the title.

As he lifted the trophy in Florida, one person was on his mind; his grandfather, who passed away just a month prior.

“It was very emotional actually,” Bergs said. “Never experienced tears in my eyes after a win, but this one was a little different because my grandfather passed away a few weeks ago when I was in Miami. Ever since, I didn’t have the chance to go home, so I had to follow his funeral from a distance. He was my biggest fan, he would text me after every match.

Zizou Bergs triumphs in Tallahassee, Florida. Credit: Tallahassee Tennis Challenger

“Every match he would give me a whole analysis of what happened and give me things to work on. I really hoped he would continue doing that just in a different way, and it definitely happened. He was present that week, I won that with him. It was very emotional and special.”

Full of passion and emotion on court, Bergs chooses to remember his grandfather by living out core values he saw in his life. As he followed his grandfather’s funeral from a different continent, Bergs noticed three principles that consistently came up when loved ones reflected on his grandfather’s life.

“I got to know him better as I was getting older and was more conscious about what was happening,” Bergs said. “Also the time he was sick, I got to know him better. The first value was positivity. He would always be positive that there was something that would help him, thinking everything was going to be okay. He wasn’t worried at all, he was a happy man.

“The second one was being combative, because he was always ready to fight. He was struggling for years with his health and for everything that came up, he would be ready to fight and do anything necessary that was needed.

“The third one was solution-oriented. He was always finding solutions in his job, with the family, he would not be complaining. If something wasn’t working in my career, I’d go to his home with my parents and we’d talk about it. He’d come up with possible solutions. I felt like these core values could be really good in tennis. They were great values to learn from and stick with me in the future.”

While Bergs will always remember his grandfather, it’s safe to say that there are tennis players in Burundi who will always be aware of the Belgian star.

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Karen Khachanov reached the fourth round at the Mutua Madrid Open for the first time on Sunday when he clawed past Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 in a Madrid thriller.

Competing in front of a packed crowd inside Manolo Santana Stadium, both took large cuts at the ball as they looked to impose their powerful games. After a tight first two sets, Khachanov hit a purple patch in the decider. He struck 20 winners in the third set compared to four from Bautista Agut and won three straight games from 3-3 to triumph in two hours and 53 minutes.

Khachanov, who is making his sixth appearance in Madrid, reached the semi-finals at the Australian Open in January before he advanced to the last four at the Miami Open presented by Itau in March. The 26-year-old is chasing his fifth tour-level crown and first since 2018 this fortnight in the Spanish capital.

With his 18th win of the season, Khachanov improved to 3-6 in his long-running ATP Head2Head series rivalry against Bautista Agut. Up one spot to No. 11 in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings, Khachanov will next meet fifth seed Andrey Rublev.

Rublev moved past Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka 6-2, 7-5 to continue his red-hot clay-court form in Madrid.

The fifth seed hit with relentless power in the fast conditions, blasting 35 winners to improve to 2-2 in his ATP Head2Head series against Nishioka. Rublev now holds a 10-1 record on clay this season, having lifted his maiden ATP Masters 1000 crown in Monte-Carlo and advanced to the final in Banja Luka.

Rublev reached the quarter-finals in Madrid last season and will aim to match that when he takes on Khachanov in the fourth round. Rublev defeated long-time friend Khachanov en route to the title in Monte-Carlo, with the pair locked at 2-2 in their ATP Head2Head series.

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In other action, Jaume Munar reached the fourth round at an ATP Masters 1000 for the first time, ending Italian qualifier Matteo Arnaldi’s run with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 victory.

The Spaniard fell to Arnaldi in Barcelona last week but gained his revenge in the Spanish capital to set a fourth-round meeting against Daniel Altmaier or German qualifier Yannick Hanfmann. Munar is up 19 spots to No. 69 in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings.