Nadal, Murray Highlight Tuesday Madrid Action

The second round commences and first round concludes at the Mutua Madrid Open on Tuesday as four-time champion Rafael Nadal and two-time champion Andy Murray begin their campaigns. Nadal enters on a 10-match and 11-set winning streak with clay-court titles at the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters and Barcelona Open BancSabadell. The Spaniard has victories over No. 2 Murray, No. 4 Stan Wawrinka and No. 6 Kei Nishikori during his unbeaten run. He opens against in-form Andrey Kuznetsov, who has won a career-best 16 matches already this season and is a career-high No. 39 in the Emirates ATP Rankings.

Murray has the distinction of winning the last Madrid title on a hard court in 2008 and on a clay court in 2015, when he dropped only five games against Nadal in the final. Should the Brit defend his title this week, he will capture his first ATP World Tour championship of the season. Murray meets 37-year-old qualifier Radek Stepanek at 8 pm on Manolo Santana. Stepanek has lost 17 of his last 18 matches against Top 10 opponents, upsetting then-No. 5 Murray to reach the 2014 London/Queen’s Club quarter-finals.

Also on the schedule are five players who competed in finals on Sunday: Munich champion Philipp Kohlschreiber and runner-up Dominic Thiem, Estoril champion Nicolas Almagro and runner-up Pablo Carreno Busta, and Istanbul runner-up Grigor Dimitrov. Thiem seeks an ATP-best 30th win of the season against former World No. 4 Juan Martin del Potro, who is playing in Madrid for the first time since reaching the 2012 semi-finals. In other matches, new World No. 10 Milos Raonic faces Alexandr Dolgopolov and No. 13 seed Gael Monfils meets Kevin Anderson, who is returning from knee, shoulder and ankle injuries.