Here we are again, in the same situation we’ve been in for the last three tournament weeks in a row (four including this one): with an outright finalist to cheer on – or yell at, depending on how it goes.
This season it’s been the latter, with only two of our 10 players who have found themselves in a deciding match actually winning the thing, so it’s fair to say we’re due a change of luck in title matches.
I said that last week as well (and the week before) and slight favourite Andrey Rublev lost in a deciding set and now we have marginal favourite Daniil Medvedev going for us against the whirlwind that is Nick Kyrgios in Washington DC.
I said yesterday that it would be a tight, serve dominated affair between Kyrgios and Stefanos Tsitsipas and our set one tie break wager was unlucky, given that there was only one break point in the set – and Kyrgios took it.
Given that NK has only broken serve 13% of the time this season that was unlucky and we’ll see if the fortune will turn my way in Sunday’s final.
It’ll be a second career clash between this pair, with the first one coming on the clay of Rome a few months ago, and that day Kyrgios was the winner in three sets, but Medvedev was struggling with injury at that time.
What we did see that day was Kyrgios using the drop shot a lot and we’ll surely witness that again on Sunday, although how effective it’ll be on a high bouncing hard court is up for debate.
It’s certainly a fair tactic against a player like Medvedev, who’s never happier than when facing a fellow baseliner and the Russian isn’t that comfortable – or that good, frankly – at the net, so it’s an obvious play for Kyrgios to bring Medvedev off the baseline and up to the net.
The Aussie has all the tools in his box of tricks to do that and his instinctive play style is something that will likely irritate Medvedev, but he has faced it before, so we’ll have to wait and see how well prepared he is and what counter measures he has for NK on Sunday.
Stats-wise, it’s Medvedev that’s been the high achiever this week, with a stellar service hold/break total of 125.7 (94.9% holds/30.8% breaks), while Kyrgios has held 91.3% of the time and broken 24.3% of the time (115.6 total).
This will be Medvedev’s eighth final at main level and he’s currently 4-3 win/loss (guess who backed him outright when he lost his most recent outdoor hard court final in Brisbane?), with his three defeats coming as betting underdog (Bautista Agut, Thiem, Nishikori the opponents).
Kyrgios is 5-3 win/loss in main level finals, with a 1-2 record when starting as underdog (beat A.Zverev as dog in Acapulco in March this year).
Interestingly, there hasn’t been a single tie break in any of the 13 finals that Medvedev has played at all levels in his career and of NK’s eight finals only two have featured tie breaks – no tie breaks is a 2.43 chance today.
It’s so hard to even make an estimate of what Kyrgios is likely to do on any given day and last night was a prime example, leading 5-1 in the final set tie break against Tsitsipas he promptly lost five points in a row to go match point down – then took four of the last five to nick it.
There was nothing at all to separate Kyrgios and Tsitsipas on the stats: the same first serve percentage; the same first serve points won and second serve points won, so therefore exactly the same points total.
The difference in the end was that NK took two of his three break chances, while Tsitsipas converted only two of his eight opportunities.
And I imagine that’s the sort of match we’ll get again on Sunday: few chances and the winner will likely be the one that plays the best in those key moments.
Against Marin Cilic, Medvedev was rock solid in the big moments, and hopefully that will be the case again on Sunday night, but who knows, so I’ll put in a hedging bet of three points on Kyrgios to ease any potential pain of yet another deciding match defeat.
Best Bet
3 points win Kyrgios to beat Medvedev at 2.06 (only if backed Medvedev outright at 8.0 earlier in the week)
