Tsitsipas vs Carreno-Busta Barcelona ATP Tour Match Preview

Barcelona, Spain

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The Tennis Purist - Pete - has been a full time tennis trader on Betfair since May 2012. Pete uses his own modelling platform to analyse data and statistics from the ATP, WTA and Challenger Tour circuits, in order to execute upon profitable trading opportunities pre-match and in-play.

Tsitsipas – ATP Barcelona Semi Final

This is the first meeting between these two, but both are extremely comfortable on the clay,

Tsitsipas hasn’t dropped a set all week, beating Moutet, Schwartzman, Ramos and Thiem on route to the Semi’s

Carreno-Busta has defeated Paire, Mannarino and Dimitrov so far, however something to consider is this,Paire beat himself against Carreno-Busta, Mannarino pushed him all the way and should have won and Dimitrov, who had looked poor all week and was shocking against Carreno-Busta yesterday. To summarise, i’m not sure he’s had a REAL challenge yet. Tsitsipas on the other hand has beaten a number of ‘clay specialists’ in Schwartzman, Ramos and Thiem, so I just feel like the Greek player is slightly better prepared for this one as far as competitive match play is concerned.

Let’s take a look at the serving stats for the two players from the tournament so far:

Tsitsipas Barcelona Open Serving Stats:

67% Service points won

89% service hold

Carreno-Busta Barcelona Open Serving Stats:

63% Service points won

79% service hold

Tsitsipas certainly has the stronger serve of the two players, and this is shown clearly by these stats, what makes these even more impressive is that the players he has played have pretty decent return stats. I expect the Greek player to go well on serve today and I would be surprised if he is broken more than twice throughout the match.

Carreno-Busta has a decent serve, but he won’t be winning many free points off it. He will need to keep his first serve % high today, in order to prevent himself being under too much pressure regularly.

Tsitsipas Barcelona Open Return Stats:

47% Return points won

50% Break points won

Carreno-Busta Barcelona Open Return Stats:

44% Return points won

52% Break points won

Both players look pretty even on the return of serve stats, with the Spaniard just edging the break point conversion %. I expect both players to put the ball in play a fair bit off the return, and it’s who can look to dictate the rally off that first ball that could well decide the match here today.

Groundstrokes:

Tsitsipas will play from the back of the court and can attack of either wing at any moment. His single handed backhand is a thing of beauty when firing, and he can hit it with heavy tospin or flatten it out and strike it down the line for winners. I do see his topspin backhand, cross-court to Carreno-Busta’s backhand being a key play today, the Spaniard may well find it difficult to hit his double-hander from above shoulder height with enough depth, consistently to prevent Tsitsipas from dictating play – look out for this pattern of play today.

Carreno-Busta will look to counter punch where he can, he has actually being playing a lot more aggressively this week to what we are used to. He will make plenty of balls back into play and will play quite deep beyond the baseline. There have been no signs of a recurrence of his back injury this week, which is a good sign, but I just wonder if he is going to be able to be aggressive enough, often enough to take this game out of Tsitsipas’ control.

I was surprised to see Carreno-Busta as a pretty strong favourite here, I actually make Tsitsipas a slight favourite, and I think the stats above help to add weight to that claim. I do expect a close match, could well be three sets but I expect the Greek superstar to advance to his first Main Tour Final.