HOPMAN CUP 2017: Roger Federer VS Richard Gasquet Predictions.

Hurray! Roger is injury free after 3 and 1/2 hours on court and 5 sets ! More importantly the match against Alexander Zverev was very important to his preparations to the Australian Open !
If you want to know his chances to win the Oz open 2017 you can have a look here:

ROGER FEDERERS CHANCES AT OZ OPEN 2017 !

His next match is against Richard Gasquet of France at 9.30 AM GMT on 6th Jan 2017. So lets analyze the form of Richard Gasquet.

Richard Gasquet VS Alexander Zverev

Richard Gasquet won the match against Alexander Zverev in straight sets !!! 7-5, 6-3. ( Roger lost in 3 tight sets ! 6-7(1),7-5(4),6-7(4) ) . He seems to be in terrific form this season. Lets look at the match statics in depth.

Aces : 4
Double Faults : 0 !
First Serve : 71 %
Second Serve : 100 %
Break points won : 43 %
First serve points won : 71 %
Second serve points won: 81 %

What we can observe is that Richard is serving extremely well, he has not served any double faults and has won 81 % of his second serve points ! ( which is phenomenal ) . Also he has been broke only once in the entire match against Sascha Alexander Zverev. Considering how well the youngster serves ( Zverev is 6 foot 5 inches ! ) , Richard has broken him 3 times !! That indicates that he is also returning the serves really well. Hats off.

Richard Gasquet VS Dan Evans

Gasquest also won the match against Dan Evans quiet comfortably in straight sets 6-4,6-2. Here most of the things remain same but some things change. Lets have a look :

Aces : 5

Double Faults : 3

First Serve : 51%

Second Serve : 88%

Break points won : 23%

First serve points won : 80%

Second serve points won: 75 %

We can see that his first serve percentage has considerable decreased from 71 % to 51 % ; If he wants to entertain any hopes of winning against Roger, he has to find his first serves a lot more than that. But we can see that his second serve points won is really great i.e. 75 % , which indicates that even if doesn't find his first serve, he has a really strong serve second serve and can defend well. ( Gasquet is 30 years of age where as Roger is 35 ).

Now lets analyze how Roger has performed against the two.

Roger Federer VS Dan Evans

This was his first match since his some back and he expected himself to be rusty but he surprised himself and also his fans by racking up a straight sets win 6-3,6-4. Lets have a look at the match statistics :

Aces : 5
Double Faults : 2
First Serve : 58 %
Second Serve : 91%
Break points won : 25%
First serve points won : 80 %
Second serve points won : 77 %

As we can see that the numbers are not that great, particularly the first serve percentage which is just 58 % . If he has to win the big matches against the best returners in the world then has to certainly serve better than that. Coming to the break points won he can do better than that because he wont get many opportunities to break against top players. The second serve points won are good. This was a pretty average match. We can understand since he was off the court for 6 months.

Roger Federer VS Sascha Alexander Zverev

This was the most awaited match of the Hopman Cup 2017 and it lived up to that expectation. 2 n 1/2 hrs of entertaining high quality tennis and the 19 year old future star had the last laugh against he 35 year old legend . Alexander won 7-6(1),6-7(4),7-6(4)( Sascha was just 1 year old when Roger won his first junior slam!!) . But there were a lot of positives for the 35 year old to take form the match. Mainly his old body could last for 2 n 1/2 hrs of tennis was a good sign and also he showed glimpses of his old self. Lets have a look at the statistics below:

Aces : 9

Double Faults : 2

First Serve : 65 %

Second Serve : 95 %

Break points won : 25 %

First serve points won : 75 %

Second serve points won : 56 %

We can see that he has improved on his first serve by 7 % i.e 58 % to 65 % , which is good to see . There is drastic decline in his second serve points won from 77 % to just 56 % which is disheartening to see.

Note: We focus on first serve percentage and not first serve points won because if any player can get his first serve in , then there are greater chances that he wins the point. Whereas we don't focus on the second serve percentage but we focus on second serve points won because generally professionals get their second serve right pretty much all the time but how much points they can win from their second serve determines if they are able to hold serve or not which determines who will win the match.

In the first serve he was 5-2 up against Sascha but eventually got broken and also lost the tie breaker. So we can see the nerves while closing . If he wants to entertain any hopes of winning his 18th slam then he should hold his nerves in the tight moments.

Roger Federer VS Richard Gasquet

Here we go ! The head to head is heavily in favor of Roger Federer, he leads Gasquet by 9-1.

Their previous meeting was at the US Open 2015 which Roger won comfortably in three sets. The only time that Gasquet has defeated Roger was way back in 2011 at the Rome masters 4-6,7-6,7-6. For tomorrows match if Gasquet wants to entertain any chance of him defeating Roger then he has to play the match of his life. Even though he has been in great form winning back to back matches against Sascha ( Roger lost to him ) and Dan Evans, both in straight sets but he might well lost the match in his head even before the match starts !!!!1

PREDICTION:

Roger wins the match in straight sets. Probably if Richard Gasquet plays really well then we might get to see a tie break which Roger will win.

Regards

TennisGuru18