An amazing week at the Estoril Open for Miomir Kecmanovic will come to an end on Sunday, when he works double duty. The 23-year-old Serb is playing in both the singles and the doubles final.
The doubles final had been scheduled to be played first on Sunday afternoon, but that will bo longer be the case since Kecmanovic is participating in both. He will be well rested for the singles title match, and not just because he doesn’t have to play doubles beforehand. Kecmanovic has been crushing opponents, reeling off straight-set wins over Luca Nardi, Jurij Rodionov, Bernabe Zapata Miralles, and Marco Cecchinato. Only one set has been more competitive than 6-4, and the world No. 40 erased Cecchinato 6-3, 6-1 in the semifinals.
However, the competition level gets a whole lot tougher in the form of Casper Ruud. Estoril’s top seed has won eight of his nine ATP titles on clay (all at the 250 level) in addition to finishing runner-up at the 2022 French Open. Ruud had been a dreadful 5-6 in 2023 prior to this week, but–as expected–things are turning around for him on the dirt with victories over Joao Sousa, Sebastian Baez, and Quentin Halys. The fifth-ranked Norwegian needed a third-set tiebreaker to get past Halys on Saturday, but the Frenchman played awesome tennis in Estoril so that really isn’t a bad result.
Kecmanovic leads the head-to-head series 2-1 (2-0 in main draws), but Ruud predictably dominated their only previous clay-court encounter 6-2, 6-1 in 2019 Rome qualifying. The world No. 5 is 8-2 lifetime in ATP 250 finals and such dominance should continue on Sunday.
Pick: Ruud in 2
WWW?
This looks to be a very competitive .
This is a tough one to call but I’ll go Ruud in 3.
And put a line through that last clay result of 62 61 – It won’t be anything like that this time.
Personally, I think it’s highly irresponsible to post that a player will lose 2-0 when they have a good shot at winning the match. But hey, this how you people roll and what we’ve all come to expect.