Tennis Prediction Alex Molcan vs Alexander Bublik: Kitzbuhel

#Kitzbuhel 🇦🇹

🇸🇰 Molcan · 2.38 | 0.5

• There are favourites to bet on without thinking, and then there's Alexander Bublik. The talent has never been the question with him, the mindset has, and it's in this gap that I'm going to look for value on Alex Molcan today.

• The draw falls badly for a player who needs to be launched to maintain his level. Molcan is left-handed, tenacious, the kind of returner who puts one more ball back and turns every opponent's service game into a negotiation. Exactly the kind of tennis that forces Bublik to run, to replay, to work, and it's when he has to work that he starts to fray.

• This scenario already has a precedent, and it's a fresh one. In April, in the first round of Munich, Molcan beat Bublik 6-4, 6-6. Sixty-five minutes of play, on clay, the third seed sent back to the locker room without seeing the light of day.

• The nuance is real and I don't hide it: Munich is slow clay at sea level, when Kitzbühel is played fast and at altitude, in a dry air that gives the Kazakh's serve more bite. The setting suits him. But a lesson as clear as that, three months ago, does not dissolve in a few hundred metres of altitude.

• Let's be fair to the end: the real Bublik, the one who wants it, whose serve becomes unplayable and who lifted the trophy here last year, resets the counters and wins this match, probably in two sets. The problem is that this Bublik doesn't come to order. He just went out in the first round in Gstaad as defending champion, and no one, including him, knows which version will show up for this quarter-final.

• Molcan, on the other hand, knows very well why he's here. A semi-final in Umag on Friday, Sebastian Ofner beaten at home in the first round, Daniel Altmaier turned over after 2h25 having given him the second set: this is not a player who doubts, this is a player who has won at least two matches in six of his seven clay court tournaments this season.

• I'll be told that he arrives drained, and it's true, six matches in ten days in his legs when Bublik was exempted from the first round and only played one match. But a left-hander who lives on clay doesn't drain like another: he holds the rallies, never gives up a game for free, and it's exactly this kind of indestructible opponent who exhausts Bublik's patience before exhausting himself.

• That's why I'm doubling up with a +2.5 games: even in the scenario where Bublik eventually finds the key, I can't see Molcan collapsing without having made him play badly and run. I mainly see him taking the Kazakh into the fight he's fleeing, and staying on the right side as long as the head follows. In two tight sets, or in three.