Philipp Petzschner v Ryan Sweeting
Tennis: ATP Masters Miami 1st round
Thursday, 25th March 2010 - Start 2pm GMT

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Preview

This is a first round match from Miami and while the weather is warm as expected, we are also expecting a lot of wind at the moment. There is potential for the winner of this to go further in the competition with Janko Tipsarevic waiting in the next round.

Philipp Petzschner is ranked as the World Number 53 and will be hoping he can continue with the form that he has shown in the early part of the season. However much of his success so far has come on the indoor hard courts and he is only 1-4 on the surface outdoors. The only win he has had came at Indian Wells in the last tournament where he suffered a 2nd round defeat to Tomas Berdych.

Last season, the German ended with a 7-10 record on the main ATP tour in matches on hard courts. There is a real chance that he can improve on his ranking and move back towards his career high of 35 as he missed this part of the season last year through injuries. He has never played in the main draw at Miami previously.

Ryan Sweeting qualified for this event by beating Dustin Brown and Thiago Alves and should be match ready to play although he has only qualified for 1 main draw this season, where he suffered a defeat in the 1st round. He had lost 3 of his last 4 matches before this week and is ranked as World Number 159.

Sweeting is 9-4 on hard courts this season, but all of those results have come in Qualifying events and he had failed to do so for any hard court event before coming to Miami. The American did win a Challenger tournament in Dallas earlier this season, but that took place on the indoor hard courts. Sweeting was 2-5 in main tour matches on hard courts last season but he did have a 19-11 record in Challengers and Qualifiers on the surface.

He has played here 3 times previously, and was a 1st round loser on 2 of those occasions, including his last appearance here. Sweeting did make it to the 2nd round the other time he competed on these courts.

These 2 players will be meeting for the first time tomorrow.

Prediction

Both players will feel they have a winnable match here, but I feel Petzschner has been playing on a higher level more consistently. The German has played the better calibre of players throughout the season and that should give him the edge.

Ryan Sweeting is going to find it hard to break back into the top 100 as he is struggling to win matches in the main ATP events. He made an early exit in a Challenger tournament last week and while some confidence would have been restored with 2 wins here, I think it will be too much for him to go through this round.

I will pick Philipp Petzschner to go through.

The Pick :

Philipp Petzschner in 2 sets

FIXED ODDS BETTING :

Philipp Petzschner WIN @ 1.8 (Pinnacle)