Tennis Prediction
Aljaz Bedene vs Evgeny Donskoy is our tennis pick for a big win today at ATP – SINGLES: Miami (USA), hard.
These two players met twice on the clay courts of Barcelona and Meknes challenger in 2012 with each winning on one occasion. Though Bedene starts as the favorite, he has to make the transition from clay to hard while Donskoy will be playing his 17th consecutive match on the hard courts in 2018 which levels up the field a bit.
Aljaz Bedene News
Aljaz Bedene returns to action for the first time since enjoying a couple of successful weeks at the South American clay court events. His performances in the clay swing pushed him to achieve his career-high ranking of #43, and he even went on to claim it as the best period of his career, “I have been playing some really good tennis, and now I have my best ranking on ATP…So, yes, I consider this the best moment of my career.”
Bedene entered the clay swing with just one win under his belt (on tour, 1/3) but he finished as the runner-up to Diego Schwartzman at Buenos Aires and made the quarterfinal at Sao Paulo.
This will be the Slovenian’s sixth consecutive appearance at Miami and the only time he left the tournament without registering a win was back in 2015 when he lost to Omar Jasika in the qualifying stages. Though Bedene lost his first-round match here in 2017 (Jan Lennard Struff), he won two matches in the qualifying rounds (Tobias Kamke and Federico Gaio).
Aljaz Bedene finished his 2017 season with two retirements (knee) in the space of 14 days, but he looks to have recovered from it based on his performance at Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo.
Evgeny Donskoy News
Evgeny Donskoy made a poor start to the season, but he seems to have gathered some momentum in the recent weeks by making the quarterfinal in two consecutive tour events, at Delray Beach (lost to Steve Johnson) and Dubai (lost to Filip Krajinovic).
The Russian produced an impressive performance to defeat the in-form Karen Khachanov in the first round of Indian Wells earlier this month but lost out to Kevin Anderson in the second, who went on to reach the quarterfinal.
Donskoy has never won a main draw match here at the Miami Open, lost to Somdev Devvarman in 2013 and Rajeev Ram in 2016.
Tennis Prediction: Aljaz Bedene to win the match
Odds: 1.66
