It's okay at 10,000

Two huge attackers are meeting in Doha, and they're in great shape!

Tsitsi cruised through the matches against Daniil. He really wanted to beat him, and the slightly slower-than-usual conditions help his game. Very solid on serve, the backhand is becoming almost a weapon... Stefanos is stepping up in Doha after his humiliating defeat last year. He has several scores to settle! Rublo is the defending champion here, but not only that: he’s had really strong results in each of his 7 appearances at this tournament. The Russian rushed Marozsan, and that alone is already huge. He also really likes the conditions. He’s unloading some insane shots, you can feel he’s in a good place. So we’re going to get a great battle between aggressors here. First one to back off loses! This will be their 15th meeting, 12th if you exclude exhibitions. And it’s very tight. Personally, I’m always afraid of getting carried away about the Russian, but this time he looks so calm. The thing is, his serve is of lower quality than the Greek’s, and that matters, even on slightly slow hard court. His backhand holds up well, and while he can give Rublo chances to attack, he can also slow down the game and break the Russian’s rhythm a bit. On the other side, we obviously have Rublo’s aggression on Tsitsi’s backhand to rush him for time. I picture a very tight match with swings in intensity, and I’ll decide what to do depending on the odds.