Review Author MoreTennis
Game preview by MoreTennis : A battle of the wolf’s of different packs, let’s call them Alfa and Beta, of course we are talking about Croatian Open Umag clay tournament and battle between Gael Monfils(Alfa) versus Silva Dutra(Beta). Why we calling them like this? It’s simple, Gael is from elite players, he was in top ten, he won a lot of ATP titles, while Silva Dutra is second level player, he is very good in challenger level on clay courts, he won many titles too, but all happened in challenger. Both players are older, they are not so young guy’s anymore, a lot of experience was collected during these all years on different courts. Both player met last year at Olympic game’s first round, France guy won easily with many nice shots in two set’s, but of course they played on hard surface and for the Brazilian its is not the favorite surface.
Gael Monfils – 30 years old player still got his best moves, but year by year its getting hard for him to perform that well and fast with all flying stuff. 13 in ranking at the time player isn’t playing such good tennis like last year, no titles, no finals, poor performance at match. What happened? We can say after last year good tennis and that injury at the end of year, totally destroyed this year tennis. As we know Monfils G. didn’t have a good pre-season, so now its very hard to show good tennis. Weak things for now in Monfils game : Serve – slower, more double faults, athletic game is much weaker, aggression almost disappeared and the aggressive game was key for Monfils, now he likes to drop balloon at the baseline and that’s all. He don’t feel ball like before.
Silva Dutra – two year older player, and 178cm height, older and smaller player, who likes mostly clay court tennis. Why? That’s simple its not all about because he is from Brazil, and clay courts are most popular there, reason is simple he have a very good strategy on clay. Aggressive and also very fast player, he can defend well, hit powerful shots and most important he uses a lot of different things on court, slice, dropshot, running to the net. Wow? He is so good, but why he is only in top 60 ranking? Well, maybe lack of different surfaces and coaches, choices when he was younger made him what he is now, also there is one thing his strategy not always working, especially for elite players. Strongest parts of his game for today is speed, aggression on court, but as we know Monfils like to play not so aggressive and more defensive tactic, so for today is very good thing france player, because Silva like’s to do a lot of errors on rallies.
Comparing players : Monfils taller player, with better serve, different style of playing, stronger and more talented for this day. Of course Monfils plays better tennis, he is elite player, but for this day in this tournament its not all about ranking who is better, is much harder for elite players here and much easier for second top players like Silva, he will try to show best tennis and wont give up easy. Even if Brazilian player are weaker on serve, on forehand and backhand, but it can be very hard for Monfils to return all hit’s.
What to expect today : Well, if we will look at yesterday match versus Goffin D. and Balasz A. So we saw how it was hard for Goffin David, same can go for Gael Monfils. Last year was last year, so we don’t need to look back at that match in Olympic game’s , today it can be totally different, but in the end Gael Monfils is better player and we need to expect his win for today, maybe even in two set’s.
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