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Sixteen second-round matches take place on Friday at the ATP Mutua Madrid Open. The winners of four of the last five editions, Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev, are also in action. As always, we here at LWOT will offer our predictions for every match on the slate for Day 3. We split them between this and three other articles–featuring Carlos Alcaraz vs Alexander Shevchenko, Holger Rune vs Mariano Navone, and Taylor Fritz vs Luciano Darderi. But who will advance?

ATP Madrid Day 3 Predictions

Alejandro Davidovich Fokina vs Shang Juncheng

Head-to-Head: Fokina 1-0 Shang

These two recently met at the Miami Open where Alejandro Davidovich Fokina won in straight sets, but the match was closer than the scoreline suggests. Fokina’s clay court season has not started as well as he had intended, with only one win in two tournaments. But the Spaniard had a good showing here last year, and there is no reason why he can’t repeat that. Shang Juncheng is coming off of an incredible win in his first-round match which lasted close to four hours. The 19-year-old Chinese wild card is very close to the top 100 and it’s a matter of when he gets there. Despite the heroics of Shang in his previous match, I like Davidovich Fokina to win in front of his home crowd.
Prediction: Davidovich Fokina in 3