Alejandro Davidovich Fokina and Jozef Kovalik will face each other in the 1/16 finals of the Hamburg European Open. The game will start on July 20 at 14:00 UK time.
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Bookmaker Ratings: Prediction One – Handicap (-5) for Davidovich Fokina – 1.89.
Bookmaker Ratings: Prediction Two – Total Games Under 20 – 1.94.
The courts in Hamburg are slow. This is where Davidovich Fokina will have an advantage over Kovalik, who had great difficulty in the first round to beating Rehberg, who is ranked #830 in the world rankings.
There is no doubt that Davidovich Fokina will only get better as the tournament progresses. He plays on his favourite clay, which was his best result this season, reaching the final at the Monte Carlo Masters.
Davidovich Fokina started the tournament with a victory over Botic van de Zandschulp (6-4, 6-4).
As expected, it was a tense match, but Alejandro was able to win in two sets.
However, it was hard to call it a convincing win. Both players were terrible at holding their serve, but Botic, who let Alejandro use six break points, was especially bad.
Davidovich Fokina lost four games on serve. By the way, he only won 57% of his points on the first ball. So, Alejandro was lucky that his opponent did not play his best match.
Last week, Davidovich Fokina lost to Sebastian Baez (2-6, 3-6) in the second round of the tournament in Bastad.
Davidovich Fokina has nine wins in his last ten matches on the clay as a favourite.
Kovalik made it to the main draw through qualification. In qualifying, he managed to beat Henri Laaksonen (6-4, 6-1) and Alexander Shevchenko (7-6, 4-6, 6-4).
In the first round, Jozef had a strong win over Max Rehberg (3-6, 7-5, 6-1). However, it’s certainly alarming here that Jozef gave up a set to the 830th-ranked player in the world.
In early July, Kovalik made two Challengers appearances in Germany. In Sauerland, he reached the semi-finals, while in Braunschweig he dropped out after the first round.
Kovalik played mostly Challenger matches this season in an attempt to move up the rankings. His win against Rehberg was his first at the ATP main draw level this year.
Kovalik has lost 9 of his last 10 matches to top-50 opponents.
In 3 of Kovalik’s last 5 matches, more than 9.5 games have been played in the first set. We offer to bet on “1st Set Games – Over 9.5” with odds of 2.09.
In the last five matches, Davidovich Fokina has played the tie-break four times. We offer to bet on “Tie-Break – Yes” with odds of 2.97.
Type of Court – Clay
Speed of Court – 4/10
Davidovich Fokina’s Rating – 35
Alejandro Davidovich Fokina Wins/Losses in 2022 – 17/18
Kovalik’s Rating – 168
Jozef Kovalik Wins/Losses in 2022 – 24/16
Alejandro and Jozef will play their first head-to-head meeting.
The match will be played at Court M1, Am Rothenbaum, Hamburg, Germany.
We recommend checking out the odds for Hamburg European Open: Davidovich Fokina vs Kovalik at Helabet and Melbet.