08/23/2020 - 11:38
- Clarín.com
- sports
Argentine tennis player Diego Schwartzman faces Norwegian Casper Ruud from 12 o'clock with ESPN television for the initial round of the Masters 1000 in Cincinnati, which is exceptionally played in New York due to restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic that kept the circuit interrupted since March.
The Peque Schwartzman, located in the 13th position of the ATP world ranking, returns to the activity against Ruud (36), champion last February of the Argentina Open, and if he wins his next rival will emerge from the American Reilly Opelka (39) and the South African Cameron Norrie (77), emerged from the classification.
Schwartzman's record against Ruud is very favorable, since he beat him the three times they met: Australia, Rio de Janeiro and Hamburg, always in 2018.
Casper Ruud, during the final against Sousa in Buenos Aires. (Photo: AP)
The tournament, which is played in the complex located in Flushing Meadows , in the New York neighborhood of Queen's, is part of the tour on concrete surface, will distribute prizes of $ 4,674,780 and has as the top favorite to the title the Serbian Novak Djokovic ( 1st), who will debut directly in the second round.
Djokovic will face the winner of the match that will be cheered on by American Tommy Paul (57th) and Lithuanian Ricardas Berankis (72nd), from the standings, while the second seed is Austrian Dominic Thiem (3rd ), who will make his debut in the second round against Serbian Filip Krajinovic (32nd) or Italian Salvatore Caruso (100th), who entered the main draw after going through the "qualy".
The defending champion is Russian Daniil Medvedev (5th), at a Cincinnati tournament that is the prelude to the US Open, to be held from August 31 to September 13 on the same stage.
Medvedev, with the Cincinnati title in 2019. (Photo: DPA)
The Peque Schwartzman will not be the only Argentine who will make his presentation in the tournament, since in the men's doubles table Horacio Zeballos will play alongside the Spanish Marcel Granollers , a duo that won two titles this year: Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro .
Zeballos, fourth in the world doubles ranking, and Granollers (16th) will debut this Monday against the pair made up of the Indian Rohan Bopanna (36th) and the Canadian Denis Shapovalov (44th).
In the case of winning, the Mar del Plata and the Catalan will play their next match against an American couple, the one that prevails in the cross that will be encouraged by Taylor Fritz (124 °) and Reilly Opelka (142 °) against Jack Sock (126 °) and Sam Querrey (156 °).
In the women's draw of the tournament, which is played in parallel, the top favorite for the title is the Czech Karolina Pliskova (3rd) and the second seed is the American Sofía Kenin (4th).
Among the ladies there will be significant casualties related to the fear of the pandemic, among the most salient the Australian Ashleigh Barty , world number one, the Romanian Simona Halep, second in the WTA ladder and the Canadian Bianca Andreescu , who in addition to not playing In Cincinnati, she will not defend her title at the US Open either, the one she won in 2019 when she beat none other than the American Serena Williams, owner of 23 Grand Slam titles, in the final.