{"id":80045,"date":"2025-02-18T15:54:49","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T20:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=80045"},"modified":"2025-02-18T15:54:49","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T20:54:49","slug":"atp-doha-day-3-predictions-including-carlos-alcaraz-vs-luca-nardi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/02\/18\/atp-doha-day-3-predictions-including-carlos-alcaraz-vs-luca-nardi\/","title":{"rendered":"ATP Doha Day 3 Predictions Including Carlos Alcaraz vs Luca Nardi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ay three at ATP Doha promises plenty of entertaining action with eight second-round matches scheduled and a number of star names in action. As always, we at LWOT will offer our predictions for every match on the slate, including Alex de Minaur vs Botic van de Zandschulp. But who will advance to the quarterfinals?<\/p>\n<h2>ATP Doha Day 3 Predictions<\/h2>\n<h4>Jack Draper vs Christopher O&#8217;Connell<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Head-to-head<\/strong>: O&#8217;Connell 1-0 Draper<\/p>\n<p>Jack Draper made a winning start on his debut in Doha, playing a solid match against the dangerous Alexei Popyrin to\u00a0 win in straight sets. He will be a serious threat this week if he can remain fit. Christopher O&#8217;Connell has made a good start to the season and is playing at a good level, especially on his serve. The Australian defeated Draper last year in Indian Wells and the conditions are similar in Doha. Draper will seek revenge and look to target the Australian&#8217;s backhand, but he will need to play at a very high level to win.<\/p>\n<p><em>Prediction: Draper in 3<br \/>\n<a id=\"dS9fxEcQTZdOR9CLdIpXmg\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2148963294\" target=\"_blank\" 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:'dS9fxEcQTZdOR9CLdIpXmg',sig:'y-yKp553HdbrvRN7KcQjKFvPESM-OpzKn3Up1zL86ko=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'2148963294',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Jiri Lehecka vs Fabian Marozsan<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Head-to-Head<\/strong>: Marozsan 1-0 Lehecka<\/p>\n<p>Jiri Lehecka took out Grigor Dimitrov, who was making his return from injury, in the ATP Doha first round. Lehecka made around 75% of his first serves and lost very few points behind it. He has such a powerful game that he can hit through any player even on these slow courts. If he can keep serving like this, he will be a serious threat to the title this week. Fabian Marozsan also won his first-round match in straight sets and has been playing some good tennis this season. He knows how to beat Lehecka but his win came on a clay court the Czech is less threatening. I have Lehecka winning on a hard court.<\/p>\n<p><em>Prediction: Lehecka in 2<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Daniil Medvedev vs Zizou Bergs<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Head-to-Head<\/strong>: first meeting<\/p>\n<p>2023 champion Daniil Medvedev came back from a set behind to win his first-round match against Karen Khachanov. Medvedev played a very defensive match for almost the entirety of two sets but showed some promising signs in the third. It was a significant win for Medvedev, who is lacking confidence.<\/p>\n<p>His next match is against Zizou Bergs, who is in the form of his life and took out former Qatar Open champion, Roberto Bautista Agut in straight sets. Bergs has never beaten a top-10 player so this will be a huge win if he can upset Medvedev. However, I can&#8217;t see that happening on such a slow court where it&#8217;s extremely hard to rush the Russian player. If Medvedev serves like he did in the first round he should win this.<\/p>\n<p><em>Prediction: Medvedev in 3<br \/>\n<a id=\"zo4QHM41QZBT4jvmicURUQ\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2197262387\" target=\"_blank\" 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:'zo4QHM41QZBT4jvmicURUQ',sig:'htuvCICQsfv7xzdZ4HdU2M_HTdiwwQYgMs88f2bMWSs=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'2197262387',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Carlos Alcaraz vs Luca Nardi<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Head-to-Head<\/strong>: first meeting<\/p>\n<p>It was a potentially tricky match for Carlos Alcaraz against Marin Cilic in the first round, with the Croatian still capable of producing flashes of the tennis that took him to the US Open title 11 years ago. But there is no doubt that Alcaraz is the superior player in the here-and-now and the Spaniard won comfortably enough in the end. It would be a near-impossible task for anyone to consistently rush Alcaraz on these slow courts so Luca Nardi scored a big win against Zhang Zhizhen and has not lost a set so far in Doha, he doesn&#8217;t have the weapons to beat Alcaraz on a slow court like those in Doha.<\/p>\n<p><em>Prediction: Alcaraz in 2<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Main photo credit: Mike Frey-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ay three at ATP Doha promises plenty of entertaining action with eight second-round matches scheduled and a number of star names in action. As always, we at LWOT will offer our predictions for every match on the slate, including Alex de Minaur vs Botic van de Zandschulp. But who will advance to the quarterfinals? ATP [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5086,"featured_media":80059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_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":[4092,4657,5729,15513,9279,15946,498,15715,18097,18800,11131,16044,13325,17201,12925,17616,2373,2369,12932,16341],"class_list":["post-80045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-predictions","tag-atp-doha-predictions","tag-atp-predictions","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-carlos-alcaraz-predictions","tag-christopher-oconnell","tag-christopher-oconnell-predictions","tag-daniil-medvedev","tag-daniil-medvedev-predictions","tag-fabian-marozsan","tag-fabian-marozsan-predictions","tag-jack-draper","tag-jack-draper-predictions","tag-jiri-lehecka","tag-jiri-lehecka-predictions","tag-luca-nardi","tag-luca-nardi-predictions","tag-tennis-picks","tag-tennis-predictions","tag-zizou-bergs","tag-zizou-bergs-predictions"],"modified_by":"Jim Smith","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80045","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\/5086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80045"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80061,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80045\/revisions\/80061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}