Elias Ymer vs Yuichi Sugita Picks, Predictions ATP Stockholm Odds 10/15/2019

Elias Ymer vs Yuichi Sugita

1 pm EST, 15th October 2019

Stockholm, Sweden

Hard courts (Indoor)

Only a couple of years ago, Elias Ymer was considered as one of the brightest prospects that European tennis has to offer. He is already 23 right now and we haven't seen the expected breakthrough, because he's still competing on the challenger tour for most of the time. Part of the problem was that he wasn't able to develop into an all-court player and is still more of a clay-court specialist. It hurts him in certain periods of the season, when he is not accumulating the points he needs to break into the Top 100. Luckily for him, Sweden is hosting few ATP tournaments and he's a regular recipient of the wildcard for those. But, he was not being able to do much with those this year, aside from winning the first round match in Bastad vs Monteiro. That was also his only win on the ATP tour this year.

This will be his first tournament since the US Open, because of the injury. Reports are saying that he is ready to go in Stockholm, but I'd still be cautious about declaring him fully fit. For a player of his ranking, prize money and the points available in the first round are too tempting, after getting used to those at Challenger level.

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The draw was very friendly to him because he got an opponent that is actually ranked even lower than him. Yuichi Sugita also failed to do anything worth mentioning at this level YTD. He only played two matches in the main draw and lost both. One of those was 10 days ago in Tokyo when he actually put up a solid resistance to Marin Cilic, but ultimately wasn't able to play around Cilic's power. What I do like about him is that he did well on hard courts this year. He was 25-12 on challenger level, towering over Ymer's 3-2. He also has a better career-best at this event, reaching the quarterfinals in 2017, while Ymer failed to get past the 2nd round in six attempts.

Matchup

Despite playing at a similar level, they haven't met yet in an official match. But, they have a quite similar playing style. Neither rellies on power too much. They both try to seek some depth with their forehand and construct the point from behind the baseline. There are some details, that will probably favor Sugita in this matchup. He can deal better with the low bounce that indoor hard courts usually provide. He is a better counter-puncher and can use the pace of the court. And he is less dependant on the topspin. Ymer likes to hit his forehand with a lot of topspin on it, push his opponent back and control the rally from the middle. It's difficult to do that in these playing conditions.

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Betting odds & prediction

The line opened Sugita -125 and saw some Ymer action right away. I'm not very surprised by that move. The public will favor the home-crowd favorite, even though his record (2-4) is clearly showing that the home court advantage didn't help him much in the past. I'm expecting the public to keep backing the Swede all the way to the start of the match when we could possibly see some Sugita +100 start popping around.

The total line is set at 22, which seems about right. As I mentioned, neither player has a big serve to hide behind, so there should be many break chances on both sides. But since they are very similar in terms of quality, I don't see anybody running away with the win comfortably.

Pick: Yuichi Sugita -118

Read more articles by Josh Schonwald