ATP Tournament in Eastbourne, Round of 16, Wednesday, 28/06/2023
On Wednesday Gregoire Barrere and Nicolas Jarry will meet in Eastbourne. The Chilean has been in good form lately and wants to get in shape before Wimbledon.
Can the Frenchman still be a threat to him, or will it be a quick march through for the Tsitsipas defeater from Halle? I give my prediction in my Barrere Jarry tip.
Barrere is comfortable on grass. If the winning percentage is anything to go by, it is the second strongest of all surfaces for the 29-year-old. He has won 18 of 31 matches in his career.
Only on hard courts does he do better. This year, however, he has not yet got into the swing of things. In Stuttgart, he won his opening match against Oscar Otte clearly in two sets, but then lost to the up-and-coming Italian Lorenzo Musetti.
In Halle, he had to admit defeat to Stefanos Tsitsipas after a close battle that included two tiebreaks. Tsitsipas, in turn, was defeated by Jarry one round later.
The Chilean is currently playing his best tennis season and is ranked 28th in the world, his best ranking. At odds of 1.40, he is listed as the favourite by Bet365. If Barrere wins, the stake is tripled.
Unlike Jarry, who does not enter the tournament until round two, Barrere has already hit form in round one. Emil Ruusuvuori still took the first set from him.
Two tiebreaks later, however, the 57 of the world left the court as the winner. But can it go any further? In his last ten tournaments he only saw the third round once.
In addition to the results, the statistics also show that Barrere is not quite comfortable on grass this year. His last opponents Ruusuvuori and Tsitsipas came to a total of 25 break chances.
The Frenchman is particularly susceptible after his second serve and has to concede about every second point to his opponent.
Will that be enough against Jarry? The man from Santiago de Chile won in Geneva before the French Open, where he beat Alexander Zverev and Casper Ruud.
He then lost to the Norwegian at the French Open. But he also made it to round four at the most prestigious clay court tournament of the year.
He started the grass-court season in Halle, where he reached the quarter-finals after two straight 2-0 wins before suffering a revenge defeat at the hands of the current Olympic champion.
All three grass court matches ended in two sets. Betano is serving 1.60 odds for two sets in the match against Barrere, quite high for this market.
I see a clear advantage for Jarry in the service game. The Chilean is almost 15 centimetres taller and can secure free points more easily than his opponent.
At 1.98 metres and about 90 kilograms, he brings the same stats as Alexander Zverev, who despite his size doesn’t weigh too much and thus remains agile enough in the defensive game.
When he can play his consistently good game, he is almost unstoppable in his service games. He also showed this against Tsitsipas, who did not get a single break chance in the second set in Halle.
The Frenchman does not have this performance potential, and in such a phase he could only get into the tiebreak with his own good serves.
He could not get enough of them in his last two matches. Four sets ended with a score of 7-6.
My Barrere Jarry tip
Jarry has the greater potential on grass if he can carry his service games through confidently. His rate of first serves has been strong in recent matches.
Barrere will face an unpleasant opponent who will not give him many chances. Only in the match against Zverev in Halle did the Chilean make an unusual number of errors.
But I assume that it will remain an exception and that he will be able to record his eleventh win from the last 13 matches. That’s why I’m going for the Barrere Jarry tip, that Jarry will win set 1 and the Matz.
