Analysis for Nadal-Karlovic (ATP Queens)

Head-to-head record 1:0

Nadal is coming off the extremely challenging clay court run and he hasn’t shown in the best light yesterday against Nishikori. Today, he will attempt to defeat big serving and tennis giant Ivo Karlovic in the quarterfinals for the first time. Nadal's playing style is best tailored for clay courts. Playing with a strong two-handed backhand, well-angled topspin heavy strokes, fast mobility on the court, excellent defense, and a preference to play from the deep court, he has developed into one of the, if not the best clay court players in the history of the game. Rafael Nadal is extremely athletic, and tends to go after every shot, even apparent winners from his opponents. However, he has been criticised by players for taking an extraordinary amount of time between points. Many people say he has the potential to win Wimbledon and become the Wolrd No.1 but we don´t think he can be that successful outside the clay. Well, he played Wimbledon´s final last year but it was more coincidence and friendly draw. The final match against Federer was affected by Roger´s fear from Spaniard. There are simply many players on the circuit whose style of play is much better suited to grass than Nadal´s style. One of them is Croatian giant. Taking advantage of his height, Karlovic is heavily reliant on his serve. With a more acute angle from his racquet to the service line, his first serves have a higher chance of coming in, thereby rendering many of them unreachable, let alone returnable. With bad returns from his opponents, he normally just has to put the ball away for a winner without the need of a proper volley. Some critics say he will not make his mark being a serve-only player, but he proved them wrong by beating top players like Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick, Fernando González and James Blake, among others. He was pretty impressive in the first 2 rounds and we think it will be extremely difficult for Rafa to break his serve. We expect a tight match again and hope we will be luckier in tiebreakers this time. Gonzalez won just 8% of receiving points against Karlovic in the previous round and we expect the similar scenario today. Odds around 2.7 are simply too high bearing in mind that tiebreakers are very likely to be played here.