Tennis Prediction Alexei Popyrin vs Thiago Tirante: Montreal

Montreal 🇨🇦

• There are two numbers on Alexei Popyrin, and they don't refer to the same player. For the season, he is ranked 103rd in the world with 11 wins and 19 losses. On the courts of Montreal, he is 9-0 in his career.

• The first 6, it was his title here in 2024, the biggest of his career. The other 3, it's this week. This tournament does something to him that the rest of the season doesn't.

• What travels with him from one year to the next is the serve. 26 aces in two complete matches this week, and facing a player who doesn't have the return to worry him.

• Thiago Tirante is coming in with the best scalp of the tournament though: Taylor Fritz knocked out in two sets on Wednesday, with 9 aces and 96% of points won behind his 1st serve.

• A precision of honesty on this. The American had won the Washington title on Monday and was playing on Wednesday, in another city. The performance remains beautiful, it is less enormous than it appears.

• And that's where my two tickets come together. Neither of these two players returns well. They are two of the weakest returns I've watched this week, and they're going to face each other.

• When no one breaks, the sets don't end in 6-3. They end in 7-5, in 7-6, and the match stretches.

• Their sheets for the week already say it: 31 games for Popyrin against Roman Burruchaga, 29 for Tirante against Duncan Chan.

• The counter-reading, I give it. Their two other matches were 19 and 21 games, two straight-set wins. If one of the two takes the lead quickly, the over falls.

• And Popyrin remains a player with 5 wins and 10 losses on hard courts this season, beaten in a Challenger 9 days ago. It's not a detail that a beautiful memory erases.

• I see a long match, with at least one tiebreaker, and an Australian who still finds a way to win on this court.