The favorites!

A final between the two biggest favorites in HK, I think that had never happened in the tournament. Can Musetti turn things around with his "Super Saiyan" version?

With 3 meetings dating from 2024 at the earliest, we don’t have too much info apart from the fact that Bublik was better on fast surfaces, but well, that we already knew. We also knew it for Rublo, but Loré has improved too much for the Russian, who once again ran into the limits of his monolithic game (even if he came to the net a ton of times, the guy, and he was absolutely right to!). The big difference with Bublik is first that he varies his game a lot more, and second that he serves much better. I actually think it’s a good thing that the Kazakh kind of “lost his cool” at the end of set 1 in his semi; it’ll get him back on the right track because I felt a slight excess of confidence. Anyway, he’s going to respect the level of the guy who just snatched his spot at the Masters a lot more ;). So I’m fairly calm about a good version of Bublik, except that… I’ve already seen him a bit off in finals or in slightly stressful conditions. And here, he’s playing a very serious guy, it’s a final, and if he wins, he becomes top 10. But! We can add another ingredient to the Hong Kong sauce: Musetti is on a streak of 6 finals lost in a row! We know it, it puts a lot of pressure on him because he wants so badly to win again (he won Hamburg and Naples in 2022, and that’s it). At the start of this year, with his new status (he just moved into the top 5) and with this being the first tournament, I imagine he’ll feel that pressure a bit less. He knows it will probably happen sooner or later this season. So I see him in a better light. Finally, on the match‑up side, that’s where it can be tough for Musetti. Unlike Rublo, Bublik plays drop shots. And that alone changes everything. You can’t just “settle” for defending well while backing up. If you retreat too much, the Kazakh is not going to spare you. So for me we have a Kazakh who is logically the favorite, but maybe a bit too much, given the pressure he might put on himself and the magic that Loré is now capable of producing more and more regularly.