{"id":626928,"date":"2026-04-24T02:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/626928\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T02:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:00:11","slug":"adam-walton-earns-big-madrid-open-victory-alexei-popyrins-2026-season-struggles-continue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/626928\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Walton earns big Madrid Open victory, Alexei Popyrin’s 2026 season struggles continue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adam Walton has enjoyed one of his best wins of a difficult season, defeating young Spanish hot-shot Mart\u00edn Landaluce in front of his home fans at the Madrid Open<\/p>\n

It was just the tonic the Australian challenge at the prestigious clay-court event in the Caja M\u00e1gica required after a sequence of dispiriting losses had continued with Alexei Popyrin getting knocked out of the ATP Masters 1000 event earlier on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Like Popyrin, Walton has found wins difficult to come by this year, with his ranking having fallen from a career-high 75 last October to No.117, and the 20-year-old Landaluce, who made the Miami quarters last month and has just broken into the top 100, looked to pose a real test.<\/p>\n

Instead, even with a vociferous Arantxa S\u00e1nchez Court crowd getting behind the youngster, Queenslander Walton delivered an efficient and clinical 6-2, 6-3 victory in just 80 fairly one-sided minutes against an opponent who may have been a touch fatigued after some of his recent impressive exploits.<\/p>\n

Much more solid, making only 14 unforced errors to Landaluce’s 23, Walton earned four breaks from his five opportunities, while repelling four of the five break chances his opponent carved out.<\/p>\n

It set up a last-64 encounter for Walton with doughty Russian 13th seed Karen Khachanov, who received a first-round bye.<\/p>\n

Any chance of an all-Australian third round between Walton and Popyrin, though, was scuppered when the Sydneysider’s own disappointing season took another downward turn as he fell to 22-year-old American qualifier Martin Damm.<\/p>\n

\"Alexei<\/p>\n

Alexei Popyrin’s tough 2026 continued on Madrid’s clay. (Getty Images: Julian Finney)<\/p>\n

Ranked 70 places higher than world No.126 Damm, Popyrin had his chances when he eked out a set point in the opening-set tie-break, but the 26-year-old went on to succumb 7-6 (9-7) 6-4, taking his record to 4-11 in 2026 while his ranking has plummeted from No.19 last August to outside the top-50.<\/p>\n

It followed Wednesday’s calamitous day for the Australian women<\/a>, when all four main-draw competitors lost in the WTA 1000 event.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

Alex de Minaur enters the fray on Friday and, like Walton, will be charged with subduing another of the exciting young Spanish brigade who’ve taken the spotlight in the absence of injured favourite Carlos Alcaraz, currently protecting a wrist problem.<\/p>\n

De Minaur will face the 19-year-old hometown hero and Real Madrid fan Rafael J\u00f3dar, who made a striking debut on Thursday by beating Dutchman Jesper de Jong 2-6 7-5 6-4 in the Manolo Santana stadium, roared on by a cheering crowd that included his favourite player, superstar Jude Bellingham.<\/p>\n

\u00a0“It was, for me, a surprise he was there. I had no idea,” J\u00f3dar said,<\/p>\n

The lanky teenager has already been labelled “outstanding” by Alcaraz as he’s shot from 687 to 42 in the rankings over the past 12 months and poses a genuine test for Australian number one De Minaur.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adam Walton has enjoyed one of his best wins of a difficult season, defeating young Spanish hot-shot Mart\u00edn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[70419,18278,38872,64,63,280666,271433,246282,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-626928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-adam-walton","9":"tag-alex-de-minaur","10":"tag-alexei-popyrin","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-madrid-open","14":"tag-martin-landaluce","15":"tag-rafael-jodar","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}