Casper Ruud is in the path of Jannik Sinner

Jannik Sinner, scoreboard

An impressive draw: the exceptional nature of these Internazionali BNL d’Italia 2023 emerges from the draw in Piazza di Spagna, which features sold-out challenges even before the round of 16.

Suffice it to say that already in the thirty-second round top players such as Alex De Minaur (No. 17) and Cameron Norrie (No. 13), Felix Auger-Aliassime (No. 10) and Sebastian Korda (No. 22) and especially Hubert Hurkacz (No. 14) and Alexander Zverev (No. 19) could come face to face.

The second quarter of the scoreboard is manned theoretically by the No. 4 seed, Norway’s Casper Ruud. Irresistible last year the good Casper has won very little in 2023. This somewhat tarnished version of him was also taken advantage of in Madrid last week by young Matteo Arnaldi. Thus it comes naturally to assign Jannik Sinner, the No. 8 seed, the “lead” in this section of the main draw. Toward a hypothetical quarterfinal against the Scandinavian, the Italian (who makes his debut against the winner between the Spaniard Munar and a player from the qualifiers) should be able to overcome the obstacles of the hostile Dutchman Tallon Griekspoor (No. 29) and especially the Moscow bomber Karen Kachanov, world No. 11, always very competitive in big dates. For Ruud, on the other hand, the theoretical obstacles should both be stars and stripes: first young Ben Shelton (No. 28), then the more experienced Tommy Paul (No. 16), who somewhat resembles Christian Ruud’s son in the way he plays.