Madrid Crisis Center, Day 3
Good morning.TV coverage of the new Madrid tournament in its new purpose-built stadium, La Caja Magica, begins this morning. Today's Order of Play is on this link. It's a Masters 1000 event for the ATP and a Premier Mandatory tournament for the WTA. Given this, and the fact that it's less than two weeks until the start of the French Open, we are expecting a large number of match-calling comments from you. This is your space for those discussions, and as usual while in Crisis Center mode, we ask that you hold all of your off-topic chat until after the day's matches are over.
I have an administrative note this morning relating to the Overflow Crisis Centers. As always we'll continue to post these as and when the number of comments on any post reaches between 400 and 500 comments. So if we're at or around that mark and this post closes for comments, please look at the foot of these headline remarks for a link to TennisWorld's Overflow Blog, where you can continue commenting. So far no change. However, we will be trying out a system whereby we no longer post a link to subsequent Overflow posts on this page. Instead they will be linked solely in the way that you're accustomed to using in TennisWorld generally - via links at the top and bottom right of each post. There won't be any links on the tennis.com front page. We're trying to make the process of putting up the necessary Overflows a little faster, and hope that this truncated procedure won't confuse too many people. So, if one of your Overflow posts closes to comments during live tennis, that means that a subsequent Overflow is already open for you.
I've taken a brief look at the new ATP rankings this morning, particularly for the Top 4. While Rafael Nadal's number one ranking remains safe whatever happens this week, Andy Murray has now moved up to number three - a spot that has been occupied by Novak Djokovic for almost two years. Currently Roger Federer has 10170 ranking points, Andy Murray 8990 points, and Novak Djokovic 8920 points. This week the three respectively have 700, 150 and 450 points to defend (from their 2008 Hamburg performances). Removing the points being defended from today's totals would put Murray on 8840 points, 630 behind Federer's 9470 points. Therefore in theory Murray could overtake Federer in the rankings this week, if he were to win the tournament, and Federer were to exit in or before the semifinals. Alternatively Novak Djokovic could regain his number three ranking this week over Murray, if the Scot makes an early exit and he makes the final or wins the tournament, but the Serb has no chance of overtaking Federer in the rankings.
As always, enjoy today's tennis.
- Rosangel Valenti
[Note: your Overflow post is linked in blue below, as we're moving comments there as of around 8.10 p.m. EST - RV.]****
***Overflow