Jannik Sinner has been playing really well this week at the 2024 Madrid Open, and he continued that in his third-round match, beating Pavel Kotov in two sets.
Sinner's last event before this one was the Monte-Carlo Masters, which was a good outing for him but ended on a sour note. He injured himself in the semi-final against Stefanos Tsitsipas, which cost him the final and likely the trophy.
He returned this week at the ATP Masters 1000 tournament in Madrid and demonstrated all his might in the first match, easily beating compatriot Lorenzo Sonego. He continued his good performances against Kotov, who obviously isn't on a similar level but still can be tricky in conditions like these.
The Russian has a good serve and plays pretty flat, which can work well in conditions where the balls fly really quickly. None of that bothered Sinner as he outplayed his opponent easily in the opening set, winning it 6-2, behind just super solid play.
Kotov did play aggressively, which is the only way he could realistically hurt the Italian, but he misfired far too often compared to his opponent. His serve didn't work that well either, which was a big problem.
The second set opened with both players winning their first games, but Kotov found some chances at the start of the second set at 1-1. He broke Sinner and took the lead but couldn't close out the set.
The Italian survived that; however, he started to feel pain in his hip, which he told his box about. Luckily, he was able to get off the court not long after that, as Kotov allowed him four match points at 6-5 in the second set, and the Italian, of course, converted one of them.
It was a pretty good match from the top seed, but we'll have to wait and see what happens with that apparent hip injury.
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