The ATP Phoenix Challenger is always one of the most interesting challenger events on the calendar, with many players who lost early in Indian Wells joining the tournament. However, this year was set up as a particularly intriguing event due to young Brazilian star Jo\u00e3o Fonseca’s participation.<\/p>\n
The Brazilian more than lived up to the hype this week, reaching the final in relatively straightforward fashion and setting up a clash with Alexander Bublik. But who will raise the ATP Phoenix title?<\/p>\n
Head-to-head:<\/strong> first meeting<\/p>\n Bublik is having a fantastic week. He beat the No. 1 seed and two-time defending champion at this tournament, Nuno Borges, to reach the final. Still, all attention will understandably be on Jo\u00e3o Fonseca, who has been showing the makings of a future top player and Slam winner in recent months.<\/p>\n The Brazilian teenager got entirely outplayed by Jack Draper (who will be playing the final tomorrow after beating Carlos Alcaraz) in Indian Wells but bounced back in style in Phoenix, mostly easing his way into the final with only one dropped set against Struff. His semifinal performance against Kei Nishikori was particularly impressive, and he is a clear favorite in this final.<\/p>\n Bublik sometimes raises his level in the rare occasions where he gets to the late stages of events, with ATP final wins over the likes of Zverev and Rublev on his resum\u00e9, and it feels that is what he needs to do here to have a chance. He played at a very high level against Nuno Borges in the semifinal, though, and might make this difficult for Fonseca at ATP Phoenix.<\/p>\n Prediction: Fonseca in 3<\/em><\/p>\n Main Photo Credit: Geoff Burke – USA TODAY Sports<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The ATP Phoenix Challenger is always one of the most interesting challenger events on the calendar, with many players who lost early in Indian Wells joining the tournament. However, this year was set up as a particularly intriguing event due to young Brazilian star Jo\u00e3o Fonseca’s participation. The Brazilian more than lived up to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1742,"featured_media":61114,"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":[510,15492,42861,12813,4657,18636,18637,2373,2369],"class_list":["post-81119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-predictions","tag-alexander-bublik","tag-alexander-bublik-predictions","tag-atp-phoenix","tag-atp-picks","tag-atp-predictions","tag-joao-fonseca","tag-joao-fonseca-predictions","tag-tennis-picks","tag-tennis-predictions"],"modified_by":"Shane Black","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81119","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\/1742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81119"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81122,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81119\/revisions\/81122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}