Popy, is it over?

Seeded here last year, the Australian is still struggling to recover from his injury...

Judge for yourself: 2 wins and 8 losses this year. All on hard courts. Less of a fighter, less accurate... Yet he’s saying in quite a few interviews that he’s not far off. In his defense, lately he’s been losing to Sinner, Mensik, FAA, and Brooksby (bad match-up for him). Miami might suit him a bit better, but he’s never had huge results here either.

On the Croatian side, it’s pretty much the complete opposite. The guy’s been playing great since the start of the year and beat the Australian right here 6–0 6–3 at the same stage of the tournament. Fast hard courts + low bounce are perfect for him. After that, we’ll have to see the weather conditions at the time of their match (I’m mainly thinking about humidity because as for the wind, Cilic handled it better than Popy in Dubai for example).

In a match that will be heavily focused on serving quality and aggression, we know who’s the more clutch of the two at the moment. Popy started his match against Brooksby at IW really badly. He can’t afford dips in level like that against Cilic. The Croatian will logically be the favorite, and even if Popy’s second set against Brooksby was better, for now there’s nothing to suggest he’s capable of putting together a complete match.