{"id":33908,"date":"2021-03-14T00:37:06","date_gmt":"2021-03-14T05:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=33908"},"modified":"2021-03-14T00:37:06","modified_gmt":"2021-03-14T05:37:06","slug":"atp-dubai-day-1-predictions-nishikori-opelka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/03\/14\/atp-dubai-day-1-predictions-nishikori-opelka\/","title":{"rendered":"ATP Dubai Day 1 Predictions Including Kei Nishikori vs Reilly Opelka"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The top seeds here at ATP Dubai this week will be World No.4 Dominic Thiem and in-form Andrey Rublev. Day 1 in Dubai will feature some of the veterans you would have heard of- Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Jeremy Chardy, Kei Nishikori. They will all be battling it out for a place in the second round. We also have predictions for the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/03\/14\/atp-dubai-day-1-predictions-karatsev-gerasimov\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">rest of the Day 1 matches<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>ATP Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships Day 1 Predictions<\/h2>\n<h4>Malek Jaziri vs Jo-Wilfried Tsonga<\/h4>\n<p>Head-to-head: Tsonga leads 2-0<\/p>\n<p>This should be a close match. Tsonga has barely played any tennis all year and Jaziri has mainly been playing on the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/category\/atp-challenger-tour\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Challenger<\/a> circuit for the last twelve months with mixed results. If Tsonga can play a bit more consistently than he played at Montpellier last month, he will have a chance. If not, he will struggle. But I will give Tsonga the benefit of the doubt.<br \/>\n<em>Prediction: Tsonga in 3<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a id=\"dHvpu8XAQXhiV9wATQGZFQ\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1195059592\" 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:'dHvpu8XAQXhiV9wATQGZFQ',sig:'K35jyR-Y7kNhaAaO-gZXFs8BlaLsA29Fj3Q72mBS5a4=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1195059592',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<h4>Jeremy Chardy vs Albert Ramos-Vinolas<\/h4>\n<p>Head-to-head: Ramos-Vinolas leads 3-1<\/p>\n<p>Despite Ramos-Vinolas holding a head-to-head advantage over the French veteran, Chardy has been playing well all season on hard courts. The 34-year-0ld Frenchman has already reached two semifinals (Antalya and Melbourne) and one quarterfinal (Rotterdam) this year. You could argue that Ramos-Vinolas has been in hot form in his past two tournaments- reaching the final in Cordoba and semifinals in Buenos Aires. But those two tournaments have been on clay so the result is not that surprising considering it is the Spaniard&#8217;s preferred surface. Despite many people thinking this will be a tough match for both players here, \u00a0Chardy should to advance to the next round with relative ease here.<br \/>\n<em>Prediction: Chardy in 2<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a id=\"-JJJQBj6SMFwn3CUKa7qkA\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1306121187\" 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:'-JJJQBj6SMFwn3CUKa7qkA',sig:'-lgdeyPphlGf98_nOMR48N3BhiJHeYW-Clt_XeUDWfI=',w:'594px',h:'402px',items:'1306121187',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<h4>Kei Nishikori vs Reilly Opelka<\/h4>\n<p>Head-to-head: First meeting<\/p>\n<p>Like Jeremy Chardy vs Albert Ramos-Vinolas, this is a match many will expect that will be a toss-up. But Nishikori should advance with ease here. Let me explain why. The young American has been struggling on all season and is currently on a three match losing streak and has lost to players he shouldn&#8217;t have lost to. His confidence is struggling.<\/p>\n<p>Nishikori, on the other hand, has had moments of brilliance this season, like <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/03\/03\/kei-nishikori-this-weeks-player-to-watch-march-3-10\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">beating Felix Auger-Aliassime and Alex de Minaur back-to-back in Rotterdam<\/a>. The 31-year-old Japanese&#8217;s game is built strongly on his return and groundstrokes. <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2019\/07\/03\/reilly-opelka-more-serve\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Opelka<\/a> will feel like his biggest weapon&#8211;his serve&#8211;being taken away as the match drags on and Nishikori will clinch the victory.<br \/>\n<em>Prediction: Nishikori in 2<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo from Getty.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The top seeds here at ATP Dubai this week will be World No.4 Dominic Thiem and in-form Andrey Rublev. Day 1 in Dubai will feature some of the veterans you would have heard of- Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Jeremy Chardy, Kei Nishikori. They will all be battling it out for a place in the second round. We [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2661,"featured_media":18651,"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],"tags":[450,4849,10870,3187,14808,314,146,14807,195,14809,19,2373,2369],"class_list":["post-33908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-predictions","tag-albert-ramos-vinolas","tag-atp-dubai-predictions","tag-dubai-duty-free-tennis-championships-predictions","tag-jeremy-chardy","tag-jeremy-chardy-vs-albert-ramos-vinolas-prediction","tag-jo-wilfried-tsonga","tag-kei-nishikori","tag-kei-nishikori-vs-reilly-opelka-prediction","tag-malek-jaziri","tag-malek-jaziri-vs-jo-wilfried-tsonga-prediction","tag-reilly-opelka","tag-tennis-picks","tag-tennis-predictions"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33908","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\/2661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}