{"id":13410,"date":"2019-04-12T16:08:29","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T20:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=13410"},"modified":"2019-04-12T16:08:29","modified_gmt":"2019-04-12T20:08:29","slug":"2019-marrakech-semifinal-predictions-including-benoit-paire-vs-jo-wilfried-tsonga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2019\/04\/12\/2019-marrakech-semifinal-predictions-including-benoit-paire-vs-jo-wilfried-tsonga\/","title":{"rendered":"2019 Marrakech Semifinal Predictions Including Benoit Paire vs Jo-Wilfried Tsonga"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The semifinals are set to get underway at the 2019 Grand Prix Hassan II in Marrakech. They will feature three Frenchmen and a lone Spaniard&#8211;Pablo Andujar, the defending champion.<\/p>\n<h2>2019 Marrakech Semifinal Predictions<\/h2>\n<h2>Pablo Andujar vs Gilles Simon<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Head to head:<\/strong> Andujar 2-1<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2019\/04\/11\/atp-marrakech-quarterfinal-predictions-including-jo-wilfried-tsonga-vs-lorenzo-sonego\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">As mentioned already<\/a>, Andujar is on a brilliant 12-match win streak. (He won five matches at the Marbella Challenger, five at the Alicante Challenger, and two here). The Spaniard seemed a little bit gassed in the opening rounds. However, he received a walkover from Jiri Vesely yesterday, which might be of huge importance here. That extra rest can prove extremely valuable against Gilles Simon, also an excellent clay-court competitor, who is perhaps the most impressive player in this tournament so far. <\/p>\n<p>It has to be said, though, that the quality of Simon&#8217;s opponents wasn&#8217;t that great, and Andujar was able to defeat him both times they played on clay. The Spaniard seems like a player that should be able to endure Simon&#8217;s defensive game. He loves the conditions in Morocco (won 2011 and 2012 in Casablanca, and also last-year here in Marrakech) and has to be insanely confident in his tennis at this point.<\/p>\n<p><em>Prediction: Andujar in 3<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a id=\"7Ri5ZXtUQzlxJZrKhIGwbw\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1082945684\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'7Ri5ZXtUQzlxJZrKhIGwbw',sig:'xy1qkf2r8XURwIgXv3-D_Svtr__EQ70-3yPWsF-Sf44=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1082945684',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Benoit Paire vs Jo-Wilfried Tsonga<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Head to head:<\/strong> Tsonga 3-0<\/p>\n<p>Both have in a way surprised everyone this week. Tsonga is suddenly looking like a top player this clay-court season, and Paire survived a very close match against Aljaz Bedene just to absolutely blast his next two opponents off the court (Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Jaume Munar). I have been predicting a sudden breakdown of Paire&#8217;s mind for the last two rounds and it didn&#8217;t happen. However, this is a match where he can just get outplayed, and I presume he will. None of their previous matches came on clay, but we don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s too much of a factor in this match-up as both of them feel very comfortable on this kind of surface. Tsonga should be much more consistent and is a more complete player than Paire.<\/p>\n<p><em>Prediction: Tsonga in 3<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The semifinals are set to get underway at the 2019 Grand Prix Hassan II in Marrakech. They will feature three Frenchmen and a lone Spaniard&#8211;Pablo Andujar, the defending champion. 2019 Marrakech Semifinal Predictions Pablo Andujar vs Gilles Simon Head to head: Andujar 2-1 As mentioned already, Andujar is on a brilliant 12-match win streak. (He [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2968,"featured_media":12061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[69,3],"tags":[5362,351,1467,314,5326,2373,2369],"class_list":["post-13410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-predictions","category-atp","tag-atp-grand-prix-hassan-ii-predictions","tag-benoit-paire","tag-gilles-simon","tag-jo-wilfried-tsonga","tag-pablo-andujar","tag-tennis-picks","tag-tennis-predictions"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2968"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}