With focus shifted towards the inaugural ATP Cup in the opening week of the tennis season, the 2020 ATP Qatar Open has been overshadowed by the new team tournament, due to overlap in the dates and the number of high profile players electing to participate at the ATP Cup.
Reigning champion Roberto Bautista Agut will not defend his crown as he represents Spain in Australia, alongside 2014 Qatar champion Rafael Nadal. Two-time winner Novak Djokovic will also be missing from the entry list this year as he leads Team Serbia at the ATP Cup down under.
Voted as the best among the ATP 250s, the Qatar Open is not devoid of star power. The headliner will be three-time Grand Slam winner Stan Wawrinka, the top seed this week. Two former Major finalists, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Milos Raonic, also make up the list.
So who will vie for the opportunity to win the first ATP Tour tournament of the year? We analyze Day 1 matches and provide our predictions.
ATP Qatar Open Day 1 Predictions
Alexander Bublik vs Adrian Mannarino
Head-to-Head: First meeting
Adrian Mannarino will hope to do better than he did on his tournament debut last year, when he fell at the first hurdle. The veteran Frenchman will open up against a pesky customer in Alexander Bublik–the 2019 Newport and Chengdu Open runner-up.
The 22-year-old Kazakh took major steps in the right direction in 2019, winning three Challenger titles along with the aforementioned runner-up finishes at the tour-level and finishing at a career-high ranking of World No.48.
Bublik has spent most of his teenage years painstakingly building up his ranking at Challenger Tour, and it paid off big time. Despite being cocky and incredibly erratic, Bublik is a fine talent. With the burden of playing qualifiers now lifted due to his high ranking, he should produce his best tennis in this first round match.
Prediction: Bublik in 3
Fernando Verdasco vs Pablo Andujar
Head-to-Head: Verdasco 2-2 Andujar
Fernando Verdasco at 36 is very much at the twilight of his career after another subpar season in which he compiled a 26-27 win-loss record. He has won seven singles ATP titles, but the last of those came almost four years ago on his beloved clay in Bucharest. Verdasco resides in Doha, but ironically he has a dismal record at the Qatar Open. In his previous six tournaments, he lost in the second round on five occasions and achieved a solitary semifinal in 2017.
Verdasco will meet Pablo Andujar in an all-Spanish affair in the first round this year. Andujar is three years his junior, but nearly called it quits from the game just 18 months ago. It is still one of the least-talked success stories in tennis for a player who fought back from the brink of retirement and three elbow surgeries to return to the winners’ circle. He performed with distinction at the 2019 US Open, where he reached the fourth round of a Grand Slam for the first time. In hindsight it was an impressive feat considering Andujar had arrived in New York with just two tour-level wins on hard court all year.
Neither player finished last year strongly which makes this a difficult match to call. But Verdasco should be more at home to excel from the baseline.
Prediction: Verdasco in 3
Miomir Kecmanovic vs Jordan Thompson
Head-to-Head: Kecmanovic 1-0 Thompson
Rising Serbian star Miomir Kecmanovic finished the 2019 season inside the World’s Top 60 (at no.59) and got an opportunity to hit the practice courts during the off-season with Roger Federer in Dubai. The Belgrade native had not won a tour-level match before 2019, but managed to earn 24 wins and reached his maiden ATP final in Antalya.
Kecmanovic will look to keep up his meteoric rise in 2020 and he opens up his campaign against Australian Jordan Thompson. Thompson is name you would barely see outside Australia in the opening week of the season as he usually plays at Brisbane and Sydney. But after being left out from Australia’s ATP Cup team, he will make his tournament debut in Doha and I expect him to struggle to impose himself against the power-hitting Kecmanovic.
Prediction: Kecmanovic in 2
Filip Krajinovic vs Kyle Edmund
Head-to-Head: Krajinovic 0-1 Edmund
To round off Day 1 of action, Britain’s Kyle Edmund will face Serbia’s Filip Krajinovic. Edmund endured a horror season in 2019 and his slide down the rankings was enough reason to see him omitted from Great Britain’s ATP Cup team. His rise has been so dramatic, dropping from 14th in the world after a career-best season in 2018 to 75th in 2019 (ended the year at No.69). He recently appointed Franco Davin as his new coach in an effort to change results.
Krajinovic performed marginally better, attaining a career-high 31 match wins and finishing in the top-40. Although Edmund’s self-belief is at an all-time low, he has very winnable opener against an inconsistent opponent.
Prediction: Edmund in 3
Main Photo from Getty.
