/ / 20 August 2007 /

Perfecseun with his pick of today's matches

Pilot Pen New Haven

Round 1 Preview

S. Koubek (Austria) vs N. Lapentti (Ecuador)

Stefan Koubek is down 2-6 in head to heads against Nicolas Lapentti but don't let that fool you as both square up in this first round match in Connecticut. The fact that you need to take into account is that Lapentti´s supremacy comes from playing the diminutive Austrian on clay court where the Ecuadorian is the stronger player. Koubek has been showing some signs of returning to his competitive self after a quarter-final appearance at Sopot and he just couldn't take advantage of Robredo´s lapses to close out the match.

It is hard to really assess this match as both players have spent the whole year playing clay court tennis. My approach generally is to watch clay courters fight it out on hard courts and stay away but I have observed Koubek since his comeback and he seems to peak close to the Slams and hard courts are good to Austrian players in general. In their matchups so far, 3 have been on hard courts, one of which was a 5-set match. Lapentti leads the hard court encounters 2-1 but it is worth adding to that the fact that Koubek has always made him work for the wins and the Austrian has always taken a set off the South American.

Like I said above, it is hard to see where this will end but Koubek is a fighter from the word go and you can count on him to come back into matches if he starts poorly. Lapentti will be strong and he will make the Austrian dig deep for the win but Koubek has more in his bag of skills and can rally from back court as Lapentti will want to control from the baseline.

Suggested Bet: Lay N. Lapentti to win 2-0 sets @ 3.8 and small stakes Back S. Koubek to win the match @ 1.9

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