Familiar foes Milos Raonic and Jack Sock will be facing each other for the Delray Beach title on Sunday. In Rio de Janeiro, meanwhile, an intriguing clay-court final pits Dominic Thiem against Pablo Carreno Busta.
Delray Beach: (1) Milos Raonic vs. (3) Jack Sock
Raonic and Sock will be squaring off for an almost hard-to-believe 11th time in their careers when they battle for the Delray Beach Open title on Sunday. The head-to-head series stands at 8-2 in favor of Raonic, who had won eight in a row at Sock’s expense until the American prevailed 0-6, 6-4, 7-6(8) at last fall’s Shanghai Masters. Raonic is 6-2 against Sock on hard courts, including 4-1 outdoors.
The good news for Sock is that he is playing arguably the best tennis of his life right now. He is 11-1 this season with a title in Auckland, wins this week over Radu Albot, Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, Steve Johnson, and Donald Young, and a loss only to a similarly red-hot Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the Australian Open third round. Raonic, playing his first event since a quarterfinal loss to Rafael Nadal in Melbourne, has advanced with victories over Borna Coric, Kyle Edmund, and Juan Martin Del Potro. The fourth-ranked Canadian had not been broken by Del Potro until he served for the match in the second set on Saturday night, but he recovered in the ensuing tiebreaker for a 6-3, 7-6(6) triumph. Sock, meanwhile, has saved only four of eight break points since fighting off all seven he faced against Garcia-Lopez and the world No. 21 got broken three times by Johnson in the quarters.
Pick: Raonic in 2
Rio de Janeiro: (4) Pablo Carreno Busta vs. (2) Dominic Thiem
Thiem impressed on the Golden Swing last year (title in Buenos Aires, semifinal at the Rio Open), and his only stop on this season’s South American clay-court is shaping up to be extremely successful. The eighth-ranked Austrian is back on his favorite surface following disappointments in Sofia and Rotterdam, and he is performing like a new player. Thiem has not yet dropped a set in Rio de Janeiro defeats of Janko Tipsarevic, Dusan Lajovic, Diego Schwartzman, and Albert Ramos-Vinolas, nor has he been pushed even to a tiebreaker.
Standing in Thiem’s way of what appears to be a remarkably routine path to a 500-point title is Carreno Busta, who is 0-3 lifetime in the head-to-head series. But it has never been easy for Thiem against Carreno Busta, with the Spaniard having taken a set on each occasion (Gstaad in 2015, Buenos Aires and the U.S. Open in 2016). This week’s fourth seed has advanced to the final with victories over Joao Souza, Victor Estrella Burgos, Alexandr Dolgopolov, and Casper Ruud, surrendering sets to all but Souza in the process. Thus continues a stellar February for Carreno Busta, who also won the deciding Davis Cup rubber for Spain against Croatia and reached the Buenos Aires semifinals. As if all of those three-setters this week have not been enough, the world No. 24 also went all the way to the doubles final with Pablo Cuevas and won it on Saturday night. A fatigued Carreno Busta may not have enough left in the tank to seriously compete with an opponent who has quite simply been by far the best player in Rio ever since top seed Kei Nishikori lost in the first round.
Pick: Thiem in 2
The post Finals previews and predictions: Raonic vs. Sock, Thiem vs. Carreno Busta appeared first on The Grandstand.