Roger Federer will continue his Hamburg campaign on Thursday against Jan Hajek. Jerzy Janowicz and Fernando Verdasco are also looking for a place in the quarterfinals.
(1) Roger Federer vs. (Q) Jan Hajek
Federer will be back in action at the German Tennis Championships when he takes the court on Thursday for a third-round matchup with Hajek. The top-seeded Swiss kicked off his week–and his experiment with a new, 98-inch racket–by overcoming Daniel Brands 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 on Wednesday evening. Federer improved to 28-8 for the season and 30-4 lifetime in Hamburg, where he last played in 2008 before the event was downgraded from a Masters 1000 to a 500-pointer.
This has already been an awesome week for Hajek, who qualified for the main draw before taking out Lukasz Kubot and Ernests Gulbis. The 140th-ranked Czech has now won back-to-back main-draw matches at three ATP-level tournaments this season, but he has not yet strung together a trio of main-draw victories in succession. He will be hard-pressed to do so against Federer, who has taken the Hamburg title four times during his illustrious career. The 17-time Grand Slam champion may not be at his very best these days and a new racket obviously requires a period of adjustment, but the discrepancy in talent should be way too much for Hajek to survive.
Pick: Federer 6-4, 6-2
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(4) Jerzy Janowicz vs. (14) Fernando Verdasco
Janowicz and Verdasco will also be going head-to-head for the first time in their careers on Thursday. Both men are heating up in the second half of the 2013 season. Janowicz reached the semifinals of Wimbledon before losing to eventual winner Andy Murray. The 17th ranked Pole improved to 21-13 for the year by edging Robin Haase in a third-set tiebreaker during second-round action on Wednesday night.
Verdasco also starred at the All-England Club, making a run to the quarters before falling to Murray in five sets. The 29-year-old Spaniard is back up to No. 34 in the world after finishing runner-up to Carlos Berlocq last week on the clay courts of Bastad. Verdasco is still just 18-14 for the season after holding off Roberto Bautista Agut 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 in his Hamburg opener, but he has not lost his first match of any tournament since mid-April. The surface should give the confident 14th seed a good chance of withstanding Janowicz’s power, so look for Verdasco to maintain his fine form.
Pick: Verdasco in 3
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