Tennis Prediction Joao Fonseca vs Stefanos Tsitsipas: Montreal

Montreal 🇨🇦

• Stefanos Tsitsipas won yesterday, but his backhand worried me. Constantly off-balance on that side, forced to step back to loop it, on the verge of breaking down whenever he had to sustain it. The match sheet says an easy win, the tennis played said something else.

• The problem is that his opponent yesterday couldn't take advantage of it. Martin Damm is a server without a return, unable to put a player under pressure from the baseline. A weakness that is not attacked is never seen.

• Today, he faces the exact opposite. And I say this having bet on the Greek the other day: Joao Fonseca hits the ball like few players on this tour, and he systematically looks for the diagonal exchange. Here, where the conditions don't reward the servers, he'll have time to set up his shot and go hit where it hurts.

• Fonseca is only 19 years old, but his spring speaks for itself. At Roland-Garros, he was down 2 sets to 0 against Novak Djokovic: he turned the match around in 5 sets and nearly 5 hours, before adding Casper Ruud in the next round. No teenager had done that in 30 years.

• And these two already know each other. In the Davis Cup last fall, on hard court, it was the Brazilian who came out on top, in 3 sets. He was 18 at the time.

• My reservation is real: Fonseca hasn't played an official match in a month, and his serve is still well below his opponent's. If he comes in timid and lets the Greek roll through his service games, this bet falls.

• But this is a chosen rest, not an injury, with a schedule announced weeks ago and an exhibition in Rio in his legs. Between a player arriving fresh and hungry, and another whose weak shot will be targeted all evening, I'm taking the Brazilian.