Two of the hottest players on tour will be squaring off when Kevin Anderson and Stefanos Tsitsipas battle for a spot in the Rogers Cup final on Saturday afternoon. Their only previous encounter came earlier this season on the red clay of Estoril, where Tsitsipas prevailed 6-7(3), 6-3, 6-3.
But the 19-year-old is aware that things could be different this time around. “I’m pretty sure he’s much more dangerous on the hard courts than clay,” Tsitsipas said of Anderson. “It’s going to be tough to deal with his serve.”
Anderson has been tough to deal with ever since last summer, when he finished runner-up to Rafael Nadal at the U.S. Open. He is now enjoying the best season of his career, highlighted by a runner-up performance at Wimbledon. The sixth-ranked South African has improved to 32-11 for his 2018 campaign with Toronto victories over Evgeny Donskoy (in a third-set tiebreaker), Ilya Ivashka, and Grigor Dimitrov–the latter via a 6-2, 6-2 beatdown.
“It was definitely a great match today,” Anderson said after thrashing the Bulgarian on Friday. “I felt I played really well right from the beginning. I think I played some really good tennis in the last couple of matches, just not from the start…. I felt I was in a really good frame of mind, playing the kind of tennis that I knew I wanted to be playing and needed to be playing.”
Tsitsipas had won just four ATP-level matches in his career prior to this season. It’s still only August 10 and he has won 29 such matches in 2018. The fast-rising Greek made a run to the Barcelona final and he is 10-2 in his last 12 outings with a fourth-round appearance at Wimbledon, a semifinal showing in Washington, D.C., and wins this week over Damir Dzumhur, Dominic Thiem, Novak Djokovic, and Alexander Zverev.
“My answer is: I have no idea how I did it,” Tsitsipas said after coming back from 6-3, 5-3 down and saving two match points against Zverev. “I’m playing great tennis; I feel very confident.”
Unfortunately for the world No. 27, he is coming off consecutive three-setters against Djokovic and Zverev–plus relatively tough affairs with Dzumhur and Thiem. With his recent semifinal result in Washington, D.C., as well, Tsitsipas has played an absurd amount of recent tennis. Anderson, on the other hand, has rolled over his last two opponents and is not only well-rested but also in simply incredible form.
Pick: Anderson in 2
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