Sebastian Ofner vs Stefanos Tsitsipas Prediction & Betting Tips - ATP Barcelona

Prediction published on 16/04/2024, 08:18  by Steve Ashfield | Modified on 17/04/2024 at 04:10 in Tennis Predictions

Stefanos Tsitsipas hopes to continue the excellent form he showed in Monte Carlo last week. He won that Masters title and begins his Barcelona Open campaign against unseeded Sebastian Ofner.  The return to clay bought about a big improvement for Tsitsipas who is seeded fifth in this ATP 500 tournament. He's now up to seventh in the latest list but down a place in the live rankings. That's because he's defending all the points he won when reaching the final of this tournament last year. Tsitsipas has reached at least the last eight in each of his last three visits here and also made the final in 2018. 

To reach the last eight in this outdoor clay court tournament, Sebastian Ofner must beat Stefanos Tsitsipas for the first time on the ATP Tour. They've only had one previous meeting and that was on clay at Roland Garros last year. Tsitsipas won that in straight sets (best-of-five) and won the third without dropping a game. Ofner also faced Tsitsipas on the Challenger Tour back in 2017 and lost a hard court match in three sets. The Austrian was as high as 37th in the rankings in January of this year. He played three tournaments on the South American clay court tour and failed to win a match. His poor run on clay continued in Marrakech. He was seeded second but lost to Aleksandar Vukic in his opening match. A first win of the year on clay was achieved in Monte Carlo when beating out-of-form Daniel Evans. He then lost in straight sets in round two to Alexander Zverev. Ofner came from behind to beat Pavel Kotov in round one of this tournament. We tip Tsitsipas to win this in straight sets.