I said yesterday that Kyle Edmund may well have to go long if he wanted to get past lucky loser Peter Gojowczyk and it did go to a deciding set, but Edmund simply didn’t play well enough on the day to earn the 2-1 win.
An off day on serve (he only managed 35% of first serves in the decider) didn’t help his cause and after losing to Donald Young in qualies Gojowczyk, improbably, now finds himself in an ATP 500 semi final.
There he’ll face our man Daniil Medvedev, who produced a fine performance in what ended up being a high quality affair against Marin Cilic on Friday.
Weather-wise we’re expecting fair conditions at around 19:00 local time when the first of the semi finals is set to begin, but it’ll still be tough at 30C and 60% humidity, rising to over 70% by 21:00 when the second semi starts.
Looking at our man Daniil Medvedev first, he’s a 1.18 favourite to defeat lucky loser Peter Gojowczyk in what will be a second career meeting between the Russian and the German.
Their first one isn’t too relevant, as it was way back in 2015 in the Shanghai Challenger when Gojowczyk was number seven seed and a 1.28 favourite, yet still lost in three sets to the then world number 409 Medvedev.
I said yesterday that Gojowczyk needed to up his first serve percentage and he didn’t really do that, but he got away with landing only 48% against Kyle Edmund, who, as I said, only managed 35% in the deciding set (and 51% overall).
Compare that to the serving prowess of Medvedev yesterday, whose serve was always a weapon that he could rely on when it got tight against Cilic and although he only managed 55% of first serves in they seemed to come when he needed them and he was not to face a single break point against Cilic.
Gojowczyk was better on the big points than Edmund, who failed to save any of the three against him and only took one of the six he created, but surely this is as far as Gojowczyk goes as a lucky loser in Washington DC.
Both men like to hit very flat, which has worked well on these DC courts, but Gojowczyk doesn’t defend as well and isn’t nearly as consistent as the Russian, who will surely prevail here if he stays at a similar level to what we’ve seen so far from him.
The first semi final is a very intriguing first clash between two fiery characters on court in Nick Kyrgios and Stefanos Tsitsipas and I’m happy to take a bit of a chance on a set one tie break here.
Tsitsipas has played 12 matches in his career against the big servers in my database and played at least one tie break in 11 of them, playing a set one tie break in eight of the 12.
Kyrgios has seemed much more relaxed this week after working with a mental coach and his serve has been superb this week: 93% holds and 87.1% first serve points won in his four matches.
The other standout stat from those four matches though is that he’s only won 41% of second serve points in matches against Gombos, Nishioka, Kwiatkowski and Simon.
That’s one reason why he’s underdog on Saturday against Tsitsipas, who’s also been serving really well, holding his own deal equally as often as Kyrgios at 93% and winning 82% of the points on first serve.
He’s been more than 10% more effective than Kyrgios on second serve at 52% of those points won and that’ll probably be where this match is won for Tsitsipas.
I’d certainly favour the Greek in this clash, but at 1.71 I’d rather take a chance on two guys that are holding serve 93% of the time playing a set one tie break and more so given Tsitsipas’ propensity of playing breakers against big servers.
Indeed, in those 12 matches that Tsitsipas has played on all surfaces against the big servers in my database he’s played 0.58 tie breaks per set, so 2.60 about over 12.5 games in set one looks a fair shout for Saturday in Washington DC.
Best Bet
0.5 points win over 12.5 games in set one of Tsitsipas/Kyrgios at 2.60
