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Ivo Karlovic will take on Jiri Vesely in the first quarterfinals of the ATP Bucharest tournament.
Karlovic entered this tournament in very poor short term form and had some problems arriving in Bucharest, missing his flight. I expected him to struggle in his first match against Coric, especially since he never played in Bucharest before – he did struggle a bit in the first set and a half, but eventually managed to get past his young compatriot in three sets. The main and only reason for which Ivo won was that his serve was absolutely impregnable, making it look like he was playing on grass instead of clay.
Ivo had a single blackout on serve in the whole match – early on in the first set, when he lost his serve to nil. It was the only time Coric had any chance to win on the Karlovic serve. Big Ivo won 43 out of 53 first serve points (89%).
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Vesely played some very good tennis this week in Bucharest, defeating Diego Schwartzman and 6-3 7-6 and Malek Jaziri 6-3 6-1. Very good all around play from Jiri, but his most impressive weapon was the serve – allowing just 3 break points and 2 breaks in two matches combined. Both breaks of serve came against Schwartzman, a player renowned for his ability to break and inability to hold serve.
Ivo Karlovic and Jiri Vesely met just once, with the Head 2 Head reading 1-0 for Big Ivo thanks to a 7-6 7-6 win last year in Dusseldorf. There were no breaks of serve in that game, even though Vesely had more chances.
Vesely looks like the in form player here and I expect him to grind out the win, but the way Karlovic has been serving, it should be a very tight match. With Big Ivo being incredibly good on serve in the first match and with Vesely also having a very strong first ball, we should see at least one tiebreak in this one. My first thought was to pick a first set tiebreak to occur, but when the under / over line was posted, I could not believe that it is so low. I expected nothing less than 24 games, so 23 games looks like a gift. There are good chances for this match to go the distance, but the under over line can be easily covered in two sets as well by these two – we saw last year in Dusseldorf that they can play two tiebreaks in two sets on clay.
My tip on this encounter is over 23 games. Theoretically the danger seems to be a 7-6 6-3 or 7-6 6-4 (which means money back), but there`s no bet with zero risk. I fully expect this to feature some tiebreaks and very possibly three sets, so I will invest 10 units on the bet. Prediction: Ivo Karlovic – Jiri Vesely 7-6 6-7 4-6.
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Pick: over 23 games
Odds: 1.86 @ Pinnacle
Stake: 10
Possible profit: 8.6
Event date: 24 April
