It promises to be an entertaining day of semifinal action at the ATP Marseille Open. As always we here at LWOT will be offering our predictions for both semifinal matches. But who will book their place in Sunday’s final?
ATP Marseille Predictions
Hubert Hurkacz vs Alexander Bublik
Head-to-head: Hurkacz 4-1 Bublik
Hubert Hurkacz barely survived Mikael Ymer, once again almost suffering from his inability to take risks in the key moments. The Swede missed a makeable 2nd serve return match point up though and the top seed somehow made it through to the quarterfinals. Alexander Bublik was 0-8 for the year before the start of this week, but managed to pick himself up and score three consecutive wins to get to the final four in Marseille for the second time (2020).
Hurkacz has a good head-to-head record against Bublik, which probably boils down to him having a similarly strong first serve and being much more solid overall. Does that mean the Pole will win? Not necessarily, as these matches are always about a few points here or there. The fact that he struggled against Ymer certainly doesn’t mean much though. The dynamics of play will be very different in this one.
Prediction: Hurkacz in 3
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Arthur Fils vs Benjamin Bonzi
Head-to-head: first meeting
If Arthur Fils can find a win here, he’d be locking up a top-100 debut. It’s certainly doable and while he has benefitted from Jannik Sinner’s withdrawal before their round two match, he was simply sublime in the two performances that we’ve seen from him against Roman Safiullin and Stan Wawrinka. The 18-year-old has now made back-to-back ATP Tour semifinals and it’s really hard to find any glaring weaknesses in his tennis. He’s the real deal.
Benjamin Bonzi also made the semifinals in Marseille last year, losing to Andrey Rublev. This time he also managed to produce a very strong set of performances, dispatching Luca van Assche, Maxime Cressy, and Alex de Minaur. Making such deep stages of tour-level events is something relatively fresh to him too, so the youngster’s inexperience might not matter that much. Right now it’s still close, but one of them has a lot more upside than the other.
Prediction: Fils in 3
Main photo credit: Mike Frey-USA TODAY Sports
