A Good First-Round

Can Kecmanovic finally make a deep run?

We've seen it quite a few times now with Kecmanovic. He plays a good match in the first round and then becomes too overvalued in the second round. What comes to mind straight away is his recent Stockholm performance... a strong performance against a weak Muller, and then he was a 1.60 favorite against Etcheverry and lost. We see that Kecmanovic tends to do well against players that lack major weapons (Muller, Majchrzak), since he can impose himself; we know his groundstrokes are great. Darderi has, understandably, dropped his level for quite a while now, since the end of the clay season and a great breakthrough year for him. We still have to be wary of him; he can still play some good matches on hardcourt, with his serve and forehand. I found his last performance in Paris against Cazaux quite decent, despite a 6-7, 6-7 loss. Kecmanovic's record in the H2H looks good, with two dominant wins on hardcourt this year. However, the first win in Hong Kong came against a Darderi that was not in form at the very start of the year (he went on a big losing streak), and the second win in Winston-Salem, a while ago, was when Darderi was absolutely gassed after a long battle against McDonald in the prior match. When they faced off in Munich, it looked like Kecmanovic was heading for another rather straightforward win, but Darderi managed to turn the match around after winning the second set tiebreak. We don't know what version of Darderi will show up; however, it seems like quite a few players are enjoying being in Athens. Something that is encouraging for Kecmanovic is that he has been returning really well, which should help to blunt the Darderi serve, which is one of his main weapons. While the matchup is not that bad, my main fears for Kecmanovic are his inability to string together good performances, as well as Darderi's clutchness in the key moments (Kecmanovic did do pretty well in this area in his first match). He was an underdog in his first match. Will he be a big favorite once again, like in Stockholm?