Casper Ruud said a calf injury suffered at Monte-Carlo nearly kept him out of the Madrid Open, where he is defending 1,000 ranking points and will start against Jaume Munar. The No. 15 seed said he was worried he might not make the trip at all after the problem flared during his third-round retirement against Felix Auger-Aliassime, when he stopped at 7-5, 2-2.
Ruud said the pain was unfamiliar from the start, making it hard to tell whether he had simply cramped up in a long, physical match or damaged something more serious. He withdrew from the Barcelona Open the following week, despite winning the event in 2024, and said the days after Monte-Carlo were difficult enough that walking up and down stairs was a struggle.
That made Madrid look like a major risk. Ruud said he would have dropped outside the world’s top 25 if he had skipped the tournament, which helped explain why he pushed to recover in time for the event where he beat Jack Draper 7-5, 3-6, 6-4 last season to claim his maiden Masters 1000 title.
He said the calf improved faster than expected once he began doing more exercises and getting more blood flow into the muscle. Ruud leads Munar 6-1 in their head-to-head, and he will now try to protect his ranking haul on the same clay where he built one of the biggest wins of his career a year ago.
The tension now is less about whether Ruud can compete than whether his body will let him finish the kind of run that made Madrid so important in the first place.
