Alexander Zverev has experience with winning the Vienna Open, but he'll need to go through native player Sebastian Ofner to get it done.
Ofner is a solid player who found his footing this year on the ATP Tour. He started on the Challenger Tour but slowly worked his way to the ATP Tour, where he didn't disappoint. There were plenty of good matches from the Austrian who hopes to add a few more on native soil in Austria.
It's going to be tough because he's facing former champion Alexander Zverev who loves indoor tennis. The serve of Zverev is a major weapon indoors and Ofner will certainly have some issues with that. If you add the good form of Zverev recently then it makes it only tougher for Ofner.
Head-to-head:
Ofner and Zverev played twice so far, and Zverev won both matches. It's not a huge surprise because he's by far the better layer but neither of these matches came this year so we've yet to see Zverev take on this version of Ofner.
Prediction:
The match will depend on the serve, and that is for both players. Zverev has the better serve but Ofner is capable of serving well as well. If they both serve well then we might see a much closer match than some people would expect.
Ofner is capable from the baseline, so he can hurt Zverev from the baseline, especially if he gets some short balls back. Don't be surprised if we see one of two tiebreaks here, especially if Ofner shows up, and I feel like he will.
Still, anything but a Zverev win would be shocking here because Ofner is not that attacking in nature, so I don't see him blowing Zverev off the courts like Safiullin did.
Prediction: Alexander Zverev to win in two sets.
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