Murray And Djokovic To Meet For Madrid 2016 Title

FINALS PREVIEW: Ten years ago in Madrid, a pair of 19-year-olds born a week apart played for the very first time on the ATP World Tour. The careers of Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray come full circle at Caja Mágica on Sunday when the World No. 1 and World No. 2 contest their 32nd match (Djokovic leads 22-9). Their first encounter was in the Round of 16, but this time the Mutua Madrid Open championship, ATP Masters 1000 title record, and No. 2 ranking are all on the line.

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Djokovic and Rafael Nadal are tied with 28 ATP Masters 1000 titles – most since the series of nine elite events was introduced in 1990. The Serb is on a remarkable run at the best tournaments on tour and against the greatest players in the world. It takes two out of three sets to win a match, but Djokovic has dropped only one of his last 32 sets against Top 10 opponents, a stretch of 14 straight victories. Djokovic has also won four of the last five and nine of the last 13 ATP Masters 1000 titles.

However, Murray has won more Mutua Madrid Open championships than Djokovic, whose lone title in the Spanish capital came five years ago. Murray, the 2008 and 2015 Madrid champion, is coming off straight-set wins over the fifth-ranked Nadal and eighth-ranked Tomas Berdych. Though he is 0-3 against Djokovic on clay, Murray is one of the most improved players on the surface. The Brit had a 63-37 clay-court record with no finals appearances entering the 2015 season. He is 24-2 on clay since then, highlighted by back-to-back titles at Munich and Madrid last May.

Murray needs to win his third Madrid title in order to remain No. 2 in the Emirates ATP Rankings. Should Murray lose in the final, both he and Roger Federer will have 7,525 ranking points. By rule, the tie is broken with the most total points from Grand Slams, the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, and ATP Masters 1000 mandatory tournaments (not including Monte-Carlo). Federer has 6,180 points in the tiebreaker, while Murray would have 6,120 points with a runner-up finish in Madrid.

The doubles final features defending champions Rohan Bopanna and Florin Mergea against No. 3 seeds Jean-Julien Rojer and Horia Tecau. Bopanna and Mergea saved a match point in the semi-finals and have earned all three of their wins this week in a match tiebreaker. Rojer and Tecau, on the other hand, have not dropped a set yet, including a semi-final win over Indian Wells, Miami and Monte-Carlo champions Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut.

Rojer and Tecau are 4-0 overall against Bopanna and Mergea. In their most recent meetings, Rojer and Tecau won 13-11 in the fifth set of the Wimbledon semi-finals and again in the final of the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals. Neither team has won a title this season, though countrymen Mergea and Tecau joined forces in their native Romania to capture the Bucharest championship on April 25. Bopanna and Rojer partnered that same week and lost in the Barcelona quarter-finals.