Talk about being packed tight: Mini-sections of draws don’t come more jammed up than the top sixteenth in Madrid.
To start, Venus Williams and Victoria Azarenka face off in the first round. Isn’t it time for Vika be seeded somewhere? This match-up is too soon, and too tough to call: Venus has a 4-1 record against Azarenka, and has had the better season so far, but Vika won their only meeting of 2015, in three sets in Doha.
It will be out of the frying pan and into the fire for whoever wins that one: Venus’ sister, Serena, looms in the third round, but that's not all. In the opening round, Sloane Stephens will play Bethanie Mattek-Sands in a rematch of their three-setter, won by Stephens, in Charleston last month; and Belinda Bencic will play Ajla Tomljanovic in a next-generation square-off.
As for Serena herself, she’s been winning so regularly that she seems to need to create a few motivating losses in her own mind. She described her recent three-set Fed Cup victory over Sara Errani as a wake-up call; it showed her, she said, that she had work to do on clay. Maybe it’s a good thing she got that call, because Serena doesn’t have an easy opener against fellow American Madison Brengle, who reached the semis in Stuttgart last week.
A Serena-Venus third-rounder would be good for the media, of course, but we could also use a Serena vs. Vika revival; they haven’t played in 16 months.
The other side of this quarter isn’t quite as loaded, but it will give us a chance to see whether Ana Ivanovic, who is just 6-6 since the start of the Australian Open, can steady the ship on clay. She’ll start against wild card Alexandra Dulgheru.
Also here: No. 10 seed Carla Suarez Navarro, of Spain. She may already be praying that someone else knocks off Serena before she has to face her in the quarters.
First-round matches to watch: V. Williams vs. Azarenka; Stephens vs. Mattek-Sands; Bencic vs. Tomljanovic