Denis Kudla vs Matteo Berrettini ATP Betting Tips - 6/14/2019

Denis Kudla vs Mateo Berrettini

4:00 am EST, 14th June 2019

ATP Stuttgart, Germany

Grass courts

What a win by Denis Kudla! After excruciating, 2 hours and 21 minutes long battle, he defeated No. 16 player in the world - Gael Monfils. It has to be one of the biggest wins of his career since he doesn't have any wins against Top 10 players. Not only that he's beaten a fairly big name in the world of tennis. The way he earned this one was pretty fascinating as well. He played on a high level throughout the entire match. Nothing was gifted to him from La Monf. Some of the stats that he was able to produce were very impressive, but none like the breakpoints conversion rate. He was extremely clutch in those moments, breaking Gael's serve 5 times in the match, while having only 6 opportunities. And his mental stability was not displayed only there. These lower ranked players can play some solid tennis for a while but will crumble as soon as the big boys start to show their teeth. Not in this case. Kudla was actually break up in all three sets. After surrendering that type of lead in the second set and losing it, many players would lose their composure in the deciding set. Denis kept it together. Had some ups and downs, once again squandered the lead, but played great tennis in the tie-breaker to earn himself a W. Already surpassing his last year result (1st round elimination), he is expected to make a nice jump in the rankings on Monday.

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He is facing another player who was impressive thus far in the tournament. Berrettini came to Stuttgart without serious grass-court pedigree, but he destroyed two top tier players with previous success on this surface. Granted, they were not in top form lately, especially Kyrgios But he left no doubt in any of those two matches with his spotless performance. Interesting fact: Matteo spent less time on the court in the entire tournament, then Denis in his match vs Monfils. Against Khachanov, he once again showed off his high-level serving and brilliant ball striking ability from his forehand side. If you give him enough time on that wing, he'll hit that one into the corner, 9 out of 10 times. Serving was as clean as it gets. 79% of points won behind his serve and 0 break opportunities offered to the Russian.

Matchup

So, what could Kudla possibly do to slow down Matteo's pace? Trying to do more of the same from the Monfils match would be a good idea in my opinion. He has a game that suits these conditions perfectly. He is striking the ball confidently, on the rise, keeping it low over the net. It will make it more difficult for a power striker like Berrettini to get a full swing on it because the tempo during the rallies is very high. That might spoil Berrettini's near-perfect winner/unforced errors ratio that he's holding right now.

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Betting odds & prediction

The line opened with Berrettini as an overwhelming favorite. He is favorite here, no doubt about it, but I wouldn't run to the window to pay -350. My problem with it is that his performance so far was almost too clean. Match vs Kyrgios looked more like shooting practice, while Khachanov wasn't on the level necessary to challenge an opponent like Matteo. That is why I'm curious to see how he responds vs someone that is also playing some of his best tennis at the moment. Someone that can bring in some counter-punching with flat groundstrokes to the table, from where it will be more difficult to hit those forehand winners which were landing so nicely in previous two matches. Also, Kudla played very well behind his serve so far in the tournament, so the bare minimum that I'm expecting from his is to keep a couple of sets close and possibly push one of them into the tie-break.

Tony's Pick: over 23 games (-108)

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