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Roger Federer will take on the mercurial Gael Monfils in a round of sixteen match at the Madrid Masters.
This will be the fourteenth match between the two. Of their thirteen matches so far, Federer has won nine and Monfils four. More importantly, they have met seven times on clay, of which the French man has managed to win only two against the Swiss maestro.
What will however give some heart to Monfils is the fact that of their last three matches, all on clay, he has managed to win two. They have surprisingly not faced each other for almost four years now. Their last meeting was at the 2015 French Open, where Federer handed Monfils a four-set defeat.
This year, both of them are in decent form. After the disappointment at the Australian Open, Federer has come back strongly and won two titles. Similarly, Monfils too has won a title at the Rotterdam Open.
Unlike Federer, Monfils’s career has been quite injury-prone. He is coming off another injury break, and is slowly easing himself in. His first match at Madrid was quite encouraging for him. He would have been especially pleased with his serving form. Though he lost his serve once against Andreas Seppi, he kept a whopping 92 percent of his serves in and did not win a single point on his second serve.
His second match was not that straight forward though. His serving form dropped against Marton Fucsovics. He lost his serve four times in a difficult three-set encounter. He will need to improve on his serve if he fancies his chances against Federer, who looked in imperious form in his first match on clay after a very long time.
Against Richard Gasquet, he did not lose his serve once and broke the French man three times in a rather easy straight-sets win. He won 71 and seventy nine percent of his first and second serve points, respectively.
On current form, it looks unlikely that Monfils will be able to mount a major challenge against the Swiss maestro.
Prediction: Federer to win in Straight Sets
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