Analysis for Federer-Karlovic (ATP Wimbledon)

Head-to-head record 8:1

Bit of a punt here. Seems like Federer is back at his best but he was kind of struggling during the return games against Soderling last round. He wasn’t far from being defeated in tiebreaks and we expect another tight match here. It would be a wasting of time to praise Federer here as we have already written a lot about his enormous skills. The main reason for this pick is his opponent. Without the words of admiration for his tennis skills, we just wanted to repeat that Karlovic is a player who has a chance against anyone in the world. Taking advantage of his height, he 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 unhittable, 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. He feels comfortable on grass and hasn’t faced a single breakpoint in his last two matches against Tsonga and Verdasco (8 sets in total) which is something really unrivalled. Croat is 1-8 down against Federer but all their meeting were deadly tight and we think anything can happen again. As we said, Karlovic can easily loose to big underdogs but can also defeat the very best players as just a few points usually decide his matches. In this light, odds above 7 are worth taken.