Seeded players David Goffin and Gael Monfils will kick off their Rotterdam campaigns on Tuesday. They are set for intriguing showdowns against Marcos Baghdatis and Ernests Gulbis, respectively.
(4) David Goffin vs. Marcos Baghdatis
Goffin and Baghdatis will be squaring off for the fifth time in their careers when they clash in round one of the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament on Tuesday. Baghdatis leads the head-to-head series 3-1, including 3-0 on hard courts. The veteran Cypriot prevailed twice during the early stages of last season; 6-1, 6-4, 4-6, 6-0 at the Australian Open and 6-2, 7-5 in Dubai. Goffin, however, emphatically turned the tide with a 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 victory at Wimbledon.
At 30 years old and 61st in the world, Baghdatis is in decent enough form to begin the 2016 campaign. He is coming off a quarterfinal performance last week in Montpellier, where he lost to eventual champion Richard Gasquet 6-4, 6-4 in the quarterfinals. Goffin fared much better at the Aussie Open this time around, getting the best of a high-quality battle with Dominic Thiem before succumbing to Roger Federer in the fourth round. Although history would suggest otherwise, this is not a favorable matchup for Baghdatis at this point in time. The two players showcase very similar styles, but Goffin is a younger, faster version of Baghdatis who can strike the ball just as well.
Pick: Goffin in 2
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(5) Gael Monfils vs. (Q) Ernests Gulbis
By recent Gulbis standards, this has already been a relatively successful tournament. The 80th-ranked Latvian qualified for the main draw by outlasting Edouard Roger-Vasselin in a third-set tiebreaker and destroying Evgeny Donskoy 6-1, 6-2. After a disastrous first two tournaments of 2016, Gubis has played better of late. He lost to Jeremy Chardy 13-11 in the fifth set in Melbourne before advancing one round in Montpellier and falling to Gasquet.
Monfils also recently faced Roger-Vasselin and it did not end well. The all-French affair saw the underdog prevail 6-4, 7-6(5) in the Montpellier opening round. Monfils looked mentally and physically out of sorts, which was somewhat surprising given his run to the Australian Open quarterfinals. Both Monfils and Gulbis, of course, are huge talents who can also go off the rails at any moment. This is likely to be an intriguing, head-scratching contest with plenty of momentum swings, but Monfils–who took their only previous meeting at the 2013 French Open–should have a slight edge as long as he is at least close to 100 percent in terms of health.
Pick: Monfils in 3
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