Kukushkin vs Baena 07/05/2018

Mikhail Kukushkin vs Carballes Baena Tennis Prediction

Roberto Carballes Baena has posted better results on clay over the years (as well as in 2018) which makes him the favorite in this contest but Mikhail Kukushkin, playing to the best of his ability (far from it this season), can make this a close contest.

Mikhail Kukushkin News

Entering the Madrid Masters qualifying stages on the back of four consecutive defeats, Mikhail Kukushkin registered two straight set wins over Nicolas Mahut and Viktor Troicki to secure his main draw berth for the second consecutive season.
After failing in the qualifying stages of 2009 and 2016 edition, the Kazakh #1 defeated Daniel Munoz De La Nava and Borna Coric in the qualifying stages to make his main draw debut in 2017 but lost to David Ferrer in the first round.
Though Mikhail Kukushkin won the Challenger title at Irving in March 2018, he is yet to win a main draw match on tour since defeating Laslo Djere in the second round of ATP Pune in the season opener. In fact, he has suffered first-round exits in eight of the ten tournaments that he entered so far this season.

Roberto Carballes Baena News

Roberto Carballes Baena is making his fifth consecutive appearance at Madrid but first as a direct entrant into the main draw, thanks to the wildcard.
In his previous four appearances, only once he made it past the qualifying stages but ended up losing to Richard Gasquet in the first round (2016).
Carballes Baena, who was struggling to win back-to-back matches on tour since winning his maiden title at ATP Quito earlier this season, won two matches and progressed to the quarterfinal at Estoril last week.
It will be interesting to see if the Spaniard is able to recover (mentally) from that quarterfinal defeat to Stefanos Tsitsipas last week as he had multiple opportunities to win the match, including a *3-0 lead in the deciding set tiebreaker.