Stat of the Day: 17 of Top 20 women playing in Madrid

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The women’s draw for the Mutua Madrid Open is out, and the WTA 1000 event—which kicks off later this week—will boast an incredible field of 17 of the Top 20 players on the WTA rankings.

That includes the Top 3 players in the world: Ashleigh Barty, Naomi Osaka and Simona Halep.

While Barty and Halep already kicked off their clay court seasons over the last few weeks—Barty reached the quarterfinals in Charleston and won Stuttgart, while Halep reached the semifinals in Stuttgart—Osaka will be playing on clay for the first time in more than a year, her last match on the surface being a Fed Cup match against Sara Sorribes Tormo in Cartagena, Spain in February 2020.

Before that, she hadn’t played a match on the surface since the French Open in 2019.

Osaka has won 23 of her last 24 matches, though, all of them coming on hard courts, and including title runs at the 2020 US Open and 2021 Australian Open, her third and fourth career majors.

The only three Top 20 players not in the women’s draw in Madrid are Sofia Kenin, Bianca Andreescu and Serena Williams. Andreescu withdrew after testing positive for COVID-19 upon arrival in the Spanish capital; 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena will kick off her clay-court season in Rome.