Rafael Nadal stops the practice to watch Casper Ruud's match in Madrid
Kicking off the season from outside the top-100, the 20-year-old Norwegian Casper Ruud has made significant progress so far in 2019, playing on a high level in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo before reaching the first ATP final in Houston last month. A son of a former top-50 player Christian (the last Norwegian ATP finalist before Casper, 24 years ago), Casper showed his full potential in Rio de Janeiro two years ago when he almost reached the final ranked outside the top-200, coming on the verge of the top-100 a few times after that.
Training at Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca for the last eight months, Ruud has been working hard on his game and set the goal to crack the top-100 as soon as possible, achieving that in the first week of March after the semi-final run in Sao Paulo. Following that great result in Houston (Christian Garin defeated him in three sets in the title clash, Casper went home and took a few weeks off, returning this weekend in Madrid where he entered the qualifying draw. The young Norwegian made a perfect start of the tournament, demolishing the 2nd seed Benoit Paire 6-1, 6-1 in just 58 minutes to move closer to the place in the main draw.
Serving at 74%, Casper dropped only ten points on serve and never faced a break point, mounting the pressure on the opponent who never found his swing. Paire had to play against 13 break chances and gave serve away five times to propel Casper into the second round against Albert Ramos-Vinolas. Practicing on the near court, the four-time Caja Magica champion Rafael Nadal stopped his practice run for a moment to take a look and check the result of Casper's match, a pretty cool move from world no. 2 towards one of his pupils at the Academy who grew up with Nadal as his idol. Nadal and Ruud had many opportunities to work together at Mallorca and we should see a lot more from the hard-working youngster in the following years, especially on clay.
from Tennis World USA http://bit.ly/2H0VA8K
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