Rafael Jodar was predicted to beat Jesper de Jong in the first round of the 2026 ATP Mutua Madrid Open, with the 19-year-old’s fast start to the clay season backing up the call. The Madrid opener was one of 16 first-round matches scheduled to begin on Wednesday.
The prediction leaned heavily toward Jodar because he has been brushing aside opponents with far more experience and the conditions in Madrid were expected to suit his game even better. De Jong, by contrast, was said to lack the same firepower and form needed to keep pace if the match turned into a straight-up baseline battle.
That verdict also reflected how quickly Jodar has moved. Just over a month before the article, he was outside the Top 100. By the time of the prediction, he was sitting comfortably inside the Top 50, a rise that made him one of the more intriguing names in the Day 1 outlook for Madrid.
The piece was a predictions article, not a match report, so it stopped short of any result. But it made the tension in plain terms: a young player with momentum, a favorable surface and a ranking surge against an opponent whose game was not judged to have enough punch to hold up if Jodar starts fast again.