Cilic – Del Potro

Marin Cilic and Juan Martin Del Potro will square off on Wednesday in a blockbuster quarterfinal on the men’s draw at Roland Garros.

Cilic is coming after a very difficult match with the in form Fabio Fognini, being pushed to 5 sets by the Italian. Cilic led 2-0 before Fognini came back and Fabio looked in good position to steal a win, but Cilic regained his composure in the deciding set and eventually won 6-4 6-1 3-6 6-7 6-3. Overall a good win by Cilic, although he wasn`t able to maintain a top level of play for the entire match. Before his Round 16 clash with Fognini, Cilic previously defeated Duckworth 3-0, Hurkacz 3-1 and Johnson 3-0.

Juan Martin Del Potro has been excellent so far in Paris, losing a single set, actually the very first set of the tournament. He was horrible in that first set, against Nicolas Mahut in the first round, losing it 1-6. But after shaking off the rust Del Potro became pretty much unstoppable, and didn`t have the slightest problems from then on – winning his next 12 sets (vs Mahut, Benneteau, Ramos and Isner), not even being pushed to a tiebreak, even if he played Isner in Round 16. He made light work of the in form American on Monday, winning 6-4 6-4 6-4.

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Del Potro leads the H2H 10-2 and has been known to have a matchup advantage over Cilic. Delpo won the last 7 matches, 6 of them being in straight sets (!!). Del Potro also won both meetings on clay in dominating fashion, a 6-3 6-0 win in 2011 in Madrid, and a 6-3 7-6 6-1 victory back in the 2012 French Open.

The H2H is very one sided here from multiple points of view, including the overall score, the recent matches, and the meetings on clay. You have Del Potro winning 17 of the last 19 sets against Cilic, and even the lousy two sets that Cilic won in this timespan actually hurt his morale even more – because he was leading 2-0 in the Davis Cup final in Croatia in 2016, with Croatia leading 2-1 … before Del Potro came back to win the match, and Delbonis closed out the deal for Argentina. Surely Cilic’s morale against Del Potro is now as shatterd as it can be.

It`s hard to see Cilic overcoming this matchup and confidence problem, especially when Del Potro hasn`t shown any weaknesses in this tournament, and actually played a little better tennis than Cilic overall. You`d feel Cilic would need special circumstances to break this Del Potro curse, he would need to be on his absolute top form and Del Potro would probably need to struggle a bit. Neither of these boxes seem to be checked ahead of this clash.

Marin has been great, but he did have plenty of moments in which his tennis wasn`t at his best. He was outplayed by Fognini for two sets in Round 16, and even had some problems with Hurkacz and Duckworth in the earlier rounds, playing some close sets and actually needing to push himself to get past Hurkacz in 4. Meanwhile, Del Potro has cruised with outmost dominance in all of his matches.

Del Potro is in beast mode right now and in these circumstances Cilic shouldn`t be able to overcome the matchup problem. At least not as long Del Potro is fit, which has been a problem for him sometimes in late stages of Grand Slams. But the Argeninean didn`t show fatigue or physical problems so far, so my tip here will be Del Potro to win. Prediction: Marin Cilic – Juan Martin Del Potro 4-6 6-3 3-6 6-7.

Pick: Del Potro
Odds: 1.59 @ Pinnacle
Stake: 8
Possible profit: 4.72
Event date: 6 June