The 2018 Internazionali BNL d’Italia tournament is at hand. The Rome Masters follows a week in Madrid in which Rafael Nadal won his 50th straight set on red clay, a record for any surface. All eyes will be on Nadal heading to Rome, and a lot of discussion will also focus on which players have a shot at meeting him in the semifinals and final.
The competition in the 56-player main draw begins on Sunday, May 13. Let’s take a closer look at the tournament with the odds provided by BetDSI.
Event Details
Event: Rome Masters
Category: ATP World Tour – Masters 1000
Date: May 13 – 20, 2018
Location: Foro Italico – Rome, Italy
With a prize money allotment of over 4.87 million Euros and an overall financial commitment of over 5.44 million, the Rome Masters is not as lucrative as the previous week’s event in Madrid, which has greater financial backing at a newer and more modern facility. Nevertheless, it has grown by almost 700,000 Euros from 2016 (4.2 million Euros then). It’s a very important tournament because it’s the last most significant warm-up tournament on the road to the French Open. Roman clay is considered a more natural clay surface compared to the harder and more packed surface at altitude in Madrid’s more enclosed courts. Rome is viewed as the truer test of a clay-court player, so everyone wants to play and do well here in order to feel good about Roland Garros.
Points
Champion – 1,000
Runner-up – 600
Semifinal – 360
Quarterfinal – 180
Round of 16 – 90
Round of 32 – 45
Former Champions and Results (5 Years)
Year Champion Runner-up Score
2017 – Alexander Zverev def. Novak Djokovic – 6-4, 6-3
2016 – Andy Murray def. Novak Djokovic – 6-3, 6-3
2015 – Novak Djokovic def. Roger Federer – 6-4, 6-3
2014 – Novak Djokovic def. Rafael Nadal – 4-6, 6-3, 6-3
2013 – Rafael Nadal def. Roger Federer – 6-1, 6-3
Player Info:
Alexander Zverev is the defending champion. This will be the first time he will defend a Masters 1000 title. How will he cope with the pressure? It’s one of the big questions of the week in Rome.
Novak Djokovic made a coaching change just before the 2017 French Open. This year, he has made a coaching change before the month of May, bringing back old boss Marian Vajda. His game looks better, but he still hasn’t been winning a lot of matches. He needs to win a few matches in Rome to truly prepare for the French Open.
Stan Wawrinka returns to the ATP Tour in Rome after a multi-month absence. Everyone will be waiting to see if his body has fundamentally healed.
Rafael Nadal is already the favorite among the bookmakers for Roland Garros and every clay tournament he plays. The Spaniard is even more dominant on clay this year than he was last year, and last year he won in Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Madrid, and Roland Garros. He is extraordinary, but he might be tired at this tournament, just as he was a year ago in Rome, when the next person on this list rose up against him.
That person is:
Dominic Thiem, who beat Rafael Nadal a year ago in Rome. What does he have in store for Nadal or the rest of the field this time?
The struggles of David Goffin are profound in 2018. The Belgian has been unable to develop a lot of momentum. He played poorly in Madrid, losing to Kyle Edmund in the round of 16 and being very mad at himself after that match. He can use a very deep run in Rome.
The Foro Italico
The Foro Italico is one of the most impressive old facilities on the ATP Tour. The central court is an intimate court with the fans right on top of the action. The stadium is tall, and the seats have a steep, sloping quality to them which shoehorns fans in an intimate way, especially for night matches. Some of the other courts at the Foro Italico are amphitheaters, basically, dug into the grounds. Fans walk the complex and can look in on some matches at the top of a court’s seating structure from their ground-level position. One of the other courts at the Foro Italico is named after two-time French Open champion Nicola Pietrangeli, one of Italy’s greatest tennis players (from the late 1950s and early 1960s).
