A first!

It's rather surprising that the two men are meeting for the first time, even though both are ranked around 40th in the world. You might have thought they would have faced each other at least once in their careers in a main-draw match, but this will be the first time in Munich.

On one side, there's a Canadian who played a pretty clean match and, I find, a bit more measured than usual. He still had a dip in the second set against the Dutchman but recovered well, he's solid and a fighter. For now, I'm pleasantly surprised without getting my hopes up too high.

As for the Hungarian, his match against the Greek Tsitsipas was very decent, despite a lack of efficiency as he converted only one break point out of 15, and that was on match point. We don't hold it against him as long as he wins, but he'll have to be a bit more clinical and pragmatic today.

I think the analysis of this match is largely about the match-up. We’re going to have two big hitters in heavy clay conditions where hitting hard isn’t enough to win. The Canadian benefited from a good match-up and a Dutchman who wasn’t in his best form to get here, whereas the Hungarian has more experience and certainty on this type of surface. In terms of the match-up, we’re going to see a territorial battle between the two, with a Canadian who hits hard but takes the ball less early than the Hungarian. So the question is: will he manage to play his best tennis while constantly being pressured by the Hungarian, who mixes things up very well with drop shots? It would be reasonable to think that the Canadian might get a bit frustrated. I think that, off clay, the match-up isn’t good for the Hungarian against Tsitsipas, because Tsitsipas is the one who attacks first. I bring up this match-up to try to guess how this one might play out, but again, the Canadian plays powerful tennis yet is a bit less aggressive than Tsitsipas, so the match-up is not exactly the same. I therefore expect the Hungarian to be a slight favorite at 1.70.