Lucas Pouille vs Benoit Paire Tennis Prediction
Lucas Pouille leads the H2H 3-1 (1-0 on clay) including winning their most recent meeting in the quarterfinal of ATP Montpellier earlier in the season (6-1 6-4). Though both of them tend to switch off more often, Lucas Pouille is relatively a bit more consistent and the better player as well, which makes him the favorite in this first round clash. That said, any result is possible in a match involving two French players.
Lucas Pouille News
Lucas Pouille suffered his third consecutive opening-round exit when he lost to John Millman at ATP Budapest (as the defending champion and top seed) a few weeks back. Prior to that, he suffered two more disappointing defeats against Mischa Zverev and Yuki Bhambri in the opening round of Monte Carlo and Indian Wells, respectively.
The Frenchman is currently on a four-match losing run on tour with his last win coming against Filip Krajinovic in the semifinal of ATP Dubai in the first week of March. However, he scored two impressive wins over Andreas Seppi and Fabio Fognini in the Davis Cup (on clay) last month.
Lucas Pouille still maintains his record of either losing his opening round match or going all the way to the final. So far in 2018, he has entered eight tournaments, and apart from reaching the finals in three of them (Marseille, Montpellier, and Dubai), he suffered opening round defeats in the other five.
The World #18 Pouille has appeared here three times in the past with his only main draw win coming against David Goffin in 2016.
Benoit Paire News
Benoit Paire ended his three-match losing run with a solid win over Nicolas Jarry in the first round of ATP Barcelona but lost the following match to Pablo Carreno Busta, who went onto reach the semifinal.
The mercurial Frenchman made an excellent start to the season by reaching the semifinal at Pune and Brisbane, and the quarterfinal at Dubai. But his performances and results in the recent weeks have been poor, and he is in desperate search of a good run to get his season back on track.
After posting disappointing results in his first three appearances at Madrid, 2014 (R2), 2015 (R1) and 2016 (R1), Benoit Paire defeated Pablo Carreno Busta and Stan Wawrinka to reach the round of 16 here in 2017.Try our tennis prediction for today: Pouille vs Paire.
Tennis Prediction: Lucas Pouille
Odds: 1.60
