Tennis Prediction Arthur Fils vs Rafael Jodar: Washington

🇺🇸 Washington

• Here I'm not buying a match, I'm buying a week: three rounds for Arthur Fils to reach the final, and a quarter of the draw that, on paper, belongs to him.

• The first obstacle is the most serious and I'm not going to give it away. Rafael Jodar is 19 years old, he won a title in Marrakech this season and he's coming off a quarter-final at Roland-Garros. No one dreams of that as a first-round match.

• Except that these two big results were written on clay. On hard courts, the Spaniard has not yet signed anything equivalent, and this is exactly the surface where the Frenchman has built his year: a final in Doha, a quarter-final in Indian Wells, a semi-final in Miami.

• They've actually already crossed paths this season, in Barcelona, the week Fils lifted the trophy by beating Andrey Rublev in the final. It was the Frenchman who got through.

• Then the draw opens up wide. Kei Nishikori or Juncheng Shang in the next round: a 36-year-old player playing his last season, invited by the tournament, and a young player who has won one match in his last five.

• And for the semi-final spot, he would have to face Lorenzo Musetti, who is returning to competition after a ten-week break, Matteo Arnaldi, eliminated in the first round of his three hard court tournaments this season, or a qualifier. None of these three scenarios scares me.

• The real doubt is elsewhere, and it is real. Fils withdrew in Rome in May with a sore hip, he withdrew from Roland-Garros and then two grass court warm-up tournaments, and his return at Wimbledon ended in the second round against Matteo Berrettini. He hasn't completed a full week yet.

• But his comeback match in London, he won it in three straight sets, and the tennis he's produced on hard courts this season is not that of a player who needs a tournament to get back in shape.

• I see him putting up a real fight against the Spaniard, then picking up speed as the rounds go by. If the hip holds up until the end of the week, no one in this quarter of the draw has the level to stop him.