The Powerful Georgian

Basil made it to the main draw; can he create some chaos?

It tends to be the same pattern with Basil. Throughout the year, he loses to lower-level guys on the Challenger tour in the first round, only to come through qualifying and go semi-deep in an ATP tournament. To say that he is hit-or-miss is quite an understatement. This kind of playstyle obviously gives a very low floor but a high ceiling; if he catches fire for long enough, the match is usually on his racket! He actually made the quarterfinal here last year, after coming through qualies then as well. He did get outclassed by Musetti in the quarterfinal, but it's a tough matchup for him unless he is firing 100% on all cylinders, since Musetti is a great defender who can get a lot of errors out of him.

I think the matchup against Kecmanovic is not bad at all for Basil. Miomir has been the same player for a long time now; he plays kind of the same way every week! Usually it's a win or two before a loss... and he tends to be the one who falters first in the big moments. Kecmanovic's movement is not the best; he doesn't like facing big hitters that can move him around the court. We really saw that against Shapovalov recently (and in their H2H). I prefer the Serb more when he gets to dictate against more passive players. Also, he is coming from Davis Cup a few days ago in Serbia, even though he has probably recovered pretty well for this match!