The fifth Masters tournament for WTA players is upon us, as the world’s finest gather in the Spanish capital for the next two weeks to meet in the latest edition of the Madrid Open.
As preparations for the 2024 French Open ramp up on the clay courts, unseeded players, wild cards and those entering with protected rankings discovered their first-round fates in Sunday’s draw, while some of the tournament’s more revered names – including holder Aryna Sabalenka – learned their possible routes to the latter stages.
Here, Sports Mole runs through some of the standout ties from this year’s Madrid Open Women’s draw, which precedes the men’s draw taking place on Monday.
Emma Raducanu to meet former world number one
On the back of a positive run at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, where she reached the quarter-finals and held her own in a quarter-final loss to world number one Iga Swiatek, Emma Raducanu now prepares to compete at Madrid for just the second time.
The Briton reached the third round on her tournament debut in 2022, losing to Anhelina Kalinina in three sets, and she will begin her next clay conquest against the Czech Republic’s Karolina Pliskova, whom she has never met at the top level before.
The 32-year-old is a former world number one and two-time Grand Slam finalist, losing the 2021 Wimbledon showpiece to Ashleigh Barty, while she made the semi-finals of the Madrid Open in 2018.
Pliskova has failed to make it past the second round in each of her other eight Madrid appearances, but she already has one WTA title to her name in 2024, beating Ana Bogdan in the final of February’s Transylvania Open. The victor can look forward to a second-round match with 17th seed Veronika Kudermetova.
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