2015 ROME: Finals Are Federer-Djokovic XXXIX and Sharapova-Suarez Navarro

As I predicted yesterday, the men's final of the 2015 Rome Masters, also known as the Internazionali BNL d'Italia (Italian Open) will be contested between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. Federer defeated his countryman Stan Wawrinka 6-4 6-2 while Djokovic squeaked by David Ferrer 6-4 6-4. The final is the 39th meeting between these two great champions and Federer has a slight 20-18 head-to-head lead, but Djokovic leads 8-5 in finals while the Swiss has a slight 4-3 edge on clay. Djokovic is not playing his best tennis but has been fighting and scrambling to win 3 consecutive 3-set matches in the tournament. Federer started off scratchy but has looked strong in later rounds; he has never won this particular Masters tournament (or Monte Carlo) and would love to strike it off his bucket list.
MadProfessah's pick: Federer.

On the women's side Carla Suarez Navarro (or CSN) outlasted Simona Halep to reach her second big final of 2015 and has clearly cemented her status as a Top 10 player on the women's tour. CSN has had some very good results in the last few weeks (beating Venus Williams, Agnieska Radwanska, Petra Kvitova, Genie Bouchard and Ana Ivanovic). However, she will face Maria Sharapova who made mincemeat out of Victoria Azarenka earlier in the week and at this point must be considered a clay court powerhouse. However, despite losing four of her last meetings to Halep CSN was able to outlast her. Could Sharapova be next? CSN is down 1-3 in theie head-to-head but none of those matches have been on clay. Still, it's hard to root against the reigning French Open champion. MadProfessah's pick: Sharapova.