Analysis for Gulbis-Seppi (ATP Queens)

Head-to-head record 0:1

In-form playing Gulbis will try to follow up with his impressive results on grass. He will face Italian Andreas Seppi in the second round. He reached the quarter finals of the French Open. Through tournament he beat Simon Greul, seventh seed James Blake, Nicolas Lapentti and home-favourite Michael Llodra. At the quarter final he lost to the third seed Novak Djokovic. However, his first round performance against Vliegen wasn’t that impressive. Gulbis primarily employs an offensive base-line playing style, although is fairly comfortable playing from all court positions. Gulbis' most consistent shot is his forehand, which has been likened to that of American James Blake's for its rapid pace and relatively flat execution; his forehand is taken with a medium swing and with high levels of wrist action, which attributes to the explosive nature of the shot. His arsenal of forehand shots is nearly complete, and thus can be extremely disruptive and turn a defensive position into an offensive position. Gulbis' primary weakness is his back-hand, which while remaining adequately deep tends to lack variety, unless a particularly advantageous situation presents itself. Gulbis' foot speed is also only moderate. His style of play is well suited to fast surfaces but despite having prodigious talent for his age, Gulbis can be prone to nervousness when down in a set or match, which can cause tight matches to be more mentally straining on him. Similarly to Marat Safin, Gulbis' playing style is extremely tactical and aggressive, and relies more on making winners than drawing errors, which can sometimes lead to a very high unforced error count. That is something we expect to happen against experienced Italian. Seppi can play a very solid game and has more experience on grass. He is not a typical Italian player having a solid serve and playing well on fast surfaces as well as on clay. He is a versatile player and we believe he is able to outplay erratic Gulbis. Odds above 2.5 are worth taking for us.