Sinner Sweeps Past Norrie To Reach Madrid Quarterfinals

Jannik Sinner moved past British 19th seed Cameron Norrie 6-2, 7-5 to reach the Madrid Open quarterfinals.

He explained he was put on first at Manolo Santana Stadium so that Jodar, his potential next opponent, would be scheduled for the afternoon, giving the Spaniard time to recover from his three-set win over Joao Fonseca, which ended at 1:00 am on Monday morning.

“It’s quite unusual for me,” Sinner told Tennis TV about his early kick-off.

“I don’t know the last time I played at 11. But for me, it doesn’t matter what time. I try to do my best. There was a question about whether it would be Jodar or me playing at 4. But I think it’s right that he plays at 4, because he finished very, very late.

“But at the same time, I feel like we need to make some adjustments to the scheduling of the day. Two matches (starting) from 8pm are very late.

“Even though you have one day in between. But still it’s very, very late.

“You finish at 1:30am, and you need to eat, you need to have treatment, so it’s very late. But we try to adapt ourselves, our bodies, our minds, so from my side it was a good performance today.”

In his first-ever meeting with Norrie, Sinner won 81 per cent of his first-serve points and 63 per cent of the points behind his second delivery on his way to notching a 25th consecutive victory at the Masters 1000 level.