2024 clay-court season sees a dearth of top-player clashes

The 2024 clay-court stretch has only seen two of the world’s top clay-court performers over the past two years appear in the same draw in all tournaments

6 May 2024

Roland-Garros trophy, 2023 – © BOUKLA Fabien/ATP/SPP/Shuttersto/SIPA

Tennis Majors

The 2024 ATP clay-court stretch prior to Roland-Garros has been a curious one.

While all of the top 10, and the most successful clay-courters over the past two years, have been present for at least some of the tournaments, very few of them were all in the same draw across this period.

Only Stefanos Tsitsipas, Casper Ruud and Andrey Rublev have appeared in all four of the same tournament draws in this year’s European clay season. Ruud and Tsitsipas have already faced off in two finals. Tsitsipas beat Ruud in Monte-Carlo, before the Norwegian got his revenge just a week later in the Barcelona Open showpiece.

Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal have only been in the same draw once, in Rome. Prior to the Italian Open, Djokovic was only present in Monte-Carlo, opting to skip Madrid, while Nadal missed Monte-Carlo before playing Barcelona, Madrid and Rome.

Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz both played in Madrid, but the Spaniard missed both Monte-Carlo and Barcelona with a lower right-arm injury while Sinner skipped Barcelona and both players will miss the Italian Open through injury.

Perhaps most disappointingly, last year’s scintillating rivalry between Alcaraz and Djokovic has not feature a single match-up on clay outside of Roland-Garros in the past two years. This year, the pair did not appear in the same draw at all prior to Paris.

Holger Rune is another who had a very successful clay-court season last year, finishing runner-up in Rome and at Monte-Carlo. He has managed four tournaments in the run-up to Roland-Garros, but as he opted to play in Munich rather than Barcelona, it means he only made the same draw as Tsitsipas and Rublev three times, rather than four.

	Djokovic	Nadal	Alcaraz	Sinner	Medvedev	Ruud	Rune	Tsitsipas	Rublev
Djokovic		1	0	1	2	2	2	2	2
Nadal	1		1	1	2	3	2	3	3
Alcaraz	0	1		1	1	1	1	1	1
Sinner	1	1	1		2	2	2	2	2
Medvedev	2	2	1	2		2	2	2	3
Ruud	2	2	1	2	2		2	4	4
Rune	2	2	1	2	2	2		2	3
Tsitsipas	2	3	1	2	2	4	2		4
Rublev	2	3	1	2	3	4	3	4

The number of times these players have been in the same tournament draw, from Monte Carlo to Rome.

Then there’s Medvedev. He won the Italian Open last year and has appeared in all clay-court tournaments apart from Barcelona prior to Roland-Garros this year.

But, surprisingly, he has only been in the same draw as most other players (barring Rublev) twice, while he and Alcaraz only appeared in the same draw once, in Madrid.

If all goes well, however, hopefully we shall see all the biggest names and clay-court specialists converging in Paris for the second Grand Slam of the year.