ATP Belgrade 2 Preview and Picks

History

The first edition of the event was a month earlier, with Berretini taking home the title defeating Karatsev in the final. It was Aslan who made the headlines though with defeating Djokovic in the semi-final.

The tournament will use the same Novak Tennis Center as before and Novak Djokovic will try to win the title on home soil in his 2nd try.

Favorites and Top Seeds

As already mentioned, Novak is back in Belgrade looking for a title.  The world no.1 has had a so-so clay court season by his lofty standards with only a semi-final in the first edition of Belgrade tournament and a final in Rome where rain and fatigue maybe proved to be too much of an obstacle against Rafael Nadal. The Serb had to play 2 matches in one day due to constant rain-delays and although he survived Tsitsipas while being constantly behind in score and Sonego, the damage was done and less than 24h he came up short against the Spaniard. It’s not often you see such high-ranked player playing an event just before a Grand Slam.

His job this time is easier on paper as neither of the top seeded players such as Monfils, Basilashvili, Mannarino are in any sort of form.  The 8th seed Delbonis is no.50 and the last accepted player is Berankis – 89th.

Gael Monfils is mired in a funk from quite some time now. His last good run came just before Covid interfered in a way that led to stop all tournaments from March to September last year. He was just going through one of his great stretches in his career with titles in Montpellier and Rotterdam and lost a very tight match against Djokovic in Dubai. When the tournaments restarted with Rome on 14th of September, he had played 8 tournaments winning 1 match in total which came last week against Lucky Loser Thiago Wild. Once in form he is a hard player to beat, but right now he is just a shell of himself.

Basilashvili, who got famous, for beating Federer in his return match from over the year on his way to a title on hard court in Doha in March added one more this time on clay in Munich last month without losing a set. So surprisingly he is one of the very few people that Benoit Paire won against in recent months which led to R1 exit in Madrid and in Rome, where he showed more teeth in a 3-set loss to No.10 in the world – Matteo Berrettini. Would be curious what his form is this week for sure, as his highs are pretty high, but lows happen alongside with them

Mannarino on other hand has not had a win on clay courts all season long and he hasn’t won more than 2 matches in a row since Australian Open in February. He is 5-12 on the year, 0-5 on clay and his ROI has been utterly terrible. 

Underdogs and Dark Horses

Filip Krajinovic is mired in a losing streak, but he is an exciting player and a local who can go deep here and maybe surprise some. He finds himself in the bottom part of the draw where Mannarino and Monfils are favorites only based on rankings but not on form.

Federico Delbonis boosts a 20-8 record on clay this year with a highlight in Rome QF appearance, and with 30.4% ROI on clay for the year alongside multiple underdog wins in recent weeks he is one to look for coming out from the bottom part of the draw and maybe facing Novak for the title.

Picks

Djokovic is the clear-cut favorite once again and his path to winning the title is even easier than what we saw a month ago. So I focused on the bottom part where guys such as Krajinovic or Del Bonis, could surely make a splash in a weaker seeds field we currently have in this 250 event.