Who can prevent Nadal from winning his 6th Madrid Title?

After capturing his 11^th title in Monte-Carlo and Barcelona, Rafal focuses now on capturing his 6^th title in Madrid. It is a routine to start the clay court season with title wins in Monte-Carlo and Banc Sabadell and he has gained confidence and has ended up with Roland Garros title each year. 2018 is also looking no different.

Already on a 19 match winning streak with 46 sets unbeaten, he is flying high on confidence. So who is going to stop Nadal in Madrid? There are players like Alexander Zverev, Dimitrov and Dominic Theim who had beaten him last year in Rome can be a potential threat to Nadal.

Novak Djokovic who has beaten Nadal 6 times in this turf is also playing this tournament and already he has started with a win over Nishikori in the first round and he is gradually gaining his form, but the kind of form Nadal is in 2018, Novak seems to be a distant candidate in this list. Novak still needs to be back to 100% and he is not at all consistent in all the previous tournaments he played.

Madrid clay is a bit different from the Monte-Carlo and Barcelona and the court is faster and really helpful for the hard court players. Already capturing 5 titles here, Nadal knows how to adapt to the conditions and he reached Madrid already and got into practicing and acclimatizing.

When we look back on the history of this tournament, Nadal won the tournament in 2005 when it was played on hard court and four more times in 2010, 2013, 2014 and most recently in 2017. He was the runner-up to Murray, Novak Djokovic, and Federer in 2015, 2011 and 2009 respectively.

 There was an excitement when Alexander Zverev and Nadal met in the Davis Cup quarter final match this year and Zverev was not able to win a single set from Nadal even though he was coming from an injury lay off.  Nadal is definitely looking like a title winner with not a lot of players really going to give a tough fight in this tournament and seems it is another cakewalk for Nadal in this Mutua Madrid Open Title. If he wins it will be real confidence booster even to put his hand on Rome title after the Madrid open and he will maintain the momentum to capture his 11^th French Open title.

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