TipResumen

PREVIEW

Marin Cilic is a former US Open Champion and he will be a dark horse to win the title in New York having already reached the Final at the Australian Open back in January. He had a surprisingly poor Wimbledon, but Cilic has looked very comfortable on the hard courts over the last month with a Quarter Final run in Toronto ended by Rafael Nadal and a Semi Final run in Cincinnati ended by Novak Djokovic. Both of those players went on to win the titles at those tournaments so Cilic is clearly in good nick and even more so when you consider the defeats came in three sets. The one concern for Cilic going forward is whether he will have the mental strength to win those tough matches if he faces them at the US Open, but the Croatian looks like he could be a threat here in New York. One area in which Cilic will want to improve is his return of serve and winning the big points on that side of his game. While he is winning more points percentage wise on the return, the break percentage is some way down on 2017 and Cilic is going to be tested by his opponent Marius Copil who has played well on the hard courts. Copil has a very big serve and he has used that to very good effect on the hard courts with 70% of points won behind that shot. That has meant a lot of holds of serve, but I do worry that the conditions may not be ideal for the Romanian in this match with the courts playing a little slower than some of the other hard courts you will see on the Tour. He hasn't played badly over the last month on the hard courts as he has pushed both Andy Murray and Marin Cilic to deciding sets. If Copil serves well he could at least give Cilic something to think about in this First Round match, especially if Cilic continues to have some issues with converting his returns into breaks of serve. The layers do think Cilic wins this one a little more comfortably than I believe he will. While I do think Cilic is very likely to move through to the Second Round, I would not be surprised if we need to see a couple of tie-breakers in this one, while Copil has actually returned with a little more success than you would think which will give him a chance to steal a set. In either of those cases this may look a total games line which is on the short side and I will back the two players to surpass that number.



PREDICTION

This may not be the straight forward match for Marin Cilic that the layers imagine. With that in mind the total games line looks a touch short to me.