Darkworth

The "duck" has lost some of its shine after its Australian tour! Is that going to last?

Really not easy to see Duck winning here. Life is tough. They just lost to a guy without having many weapons, and they’re playing him again the following week. The two players faced each other a week ago in Acapulco. Svrcina took advantage of his Lucky Loser status to beat the Australian Duckworth handily. I say handily because in these tough, slightly slower conditions, Svrcina is a nightmare to play. His solidity both on return and from the baseline is clearly an obstacle for Duckworth’s game, who usually manages to manipulate his opponents by mixing aggressive serve–forehand patterns with backhand slice. Unfortunately for him, those are fairly weak weapons against Svrcina’s game, who is also coming out of qualifiers and is on a great run. The only question now is whether Svrcina’s odds are still worth taking, because I really don’t see any outcome other than a win for him.