Analysis for Navarro-Machado (ATP Costa do Sauipe)

Head-to-head record 1:0

Rui Machado is our favourite player. We have been watching him all over his career as he was considered to be the biggest talent of Portugese tennis. In 2006, Rui suffered the knee injury at Davis Cup Match in Portugal and during 2006 and 2007 almost did not compete at the highest level. In 2008, he finally showed some signs of improvement. Machado began his comeback with a spectacular run on the Futures circuit early in 2008. After failing to qualify into Portugal F3 in late January, he went on to win his next 26 matches in a row, losing just 2 sets along the way. He won Italy F1, qualified into and won Portugal F4, then won Portugal F5 an F6, both using Special Entry status. He finally lost a match two weeks later in the semifinal of Spain F12 to Pere Riba, but got revenge the following week at Spain F13, beating Riba in the final, for his 5th Futures win in his last 6 tries. The string of victories took his ranking from No.729 in February to No.371 in early April. Just 10 weeks after having to play qualifiers to get into Futures tournaments in Portugal, he was given a Wild Card entry into Portugal's ATP stop in Estoril, and made great use of it, defeating Ivo Karlovic in the first round in his first-ever ATP-level match. Lately he has been participating in Challengers with a remark for Segovia where he lost in a 3rd set match at Semi-Final. In August 2008 he managed to pass US Open qualifying, defeating Nunez, Massu and Cippola to reach his first appearance at a Grand Slam Level. He got easily through the first round to be beaten by Fernando Verdasco in the second round in 5 sets! That year he reached Top 200 and it can be considered so far his best year of ever, climbing over 500 places in ATP Rankings! He hasn’t played a single tournament in 2009 so far but was impressive in qualifiers here in Costa do Sauipe and he looks to be back on the track in the same shape as last year. We are looking forward to his match against Ivan Navarro. Navarro is just a mediocre player who never reached any remarkable success on the tour. Furthermore, his current form is not convincing at all as he lost 4 out of 5 matches he played in 2009 beating just unknown Dasnieres De Veigy in Auckland qualifiers. This is gonna be his clay court debut and we hope he will come short against Machado who already has few clay court matches under the belt. Odds above 2 are worth taking here.