Many of you might have seen one or pehaps even both of these two play at Roland Garros, both did well, Jeremy Chardy rode that tidal wave of French success at the championships to the last 16 where he took Andy Murray to four sets, if I tell you that he hit 4 aces, 10 double faults and 49 winners and 56 unforced errors, that will kind of tell you where we are with Monsieur Chardy, he is great fun to watch, hits the ball very hard, but it is all black and white with few grey areas in his game. Thanasi Kokkinakis is the identikit young Australian player so, a massive serve, bags of confidence and fearful of no one. He has been working a bit with Lleyton Hewitt and was practicing with him yesterday morning, having only turned 19 in April, Kokkinakis already has a solid run at Roland Garros to his name and made the last 32 where he lost 4,4 &4 to Novak Djokovic, he hit 8 aces and won 73% of points on first serve and 56% on second, against one of the greatest returners of serve of all time. Those numbers were better than Murray and Rafa managed against Novak and on a par with whatFrench Open champion Stan Wawrinka managed in the final. Oo course, the Aussies return is not of the same level, nowhere near , at least not yet, but Hewitt will probably have given him a few tips in that regard and would make most top 5-10 lists of best returns ever in the mens' game.
Chardy is very comeptent on grass, but lost in three tie breaks to Sam Querrrey last year at Queens and the transition from clay to grass is never easy and I doubt he has done as much in build up as TK. Chardy played Djokovic at Roland Garros last year ( 3 aces,58%/32%) to give the Kokkinakis stats some context. Chardy is 5-7 against taller players ranked inside the top 100 this year and dropped a set in the last two of those that he won. The youngster is said to be really looking forward to this, to thrive on the big stage and he proved that at RG. Hard to see too many breaks here, I will suggest........
"over" 23.5 games 2.0 general quote.
Thanasi Kokkinalis to beat Jeremy Chardy 2.75 general quote........2.969 Pinnacle
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