Gasquet Faces Up Against Haase

Richard Gasquet will take on Robin Haase of Netherlands in the first round of the Gerry Weber Open tomorrow. It’s going to be the third encounter between these two players. Both the previous ones had gone Gasquet’s way.

As far as Gasquet’s recent form is concerned, he got knocked out from the third round of the recently finished French Open, but, that was not such a bad performance considering the fact that he had entered the tournament with no match practice at all. He was getting recovered from his back problem in the weeks prior to the tournament.

On the contrary, Haase has featured in a lot of clay court competitions in the recent past. He hasn’t won that much in those competitions though, but, he at least has considerable amount of match practice in his stride.

However, since the tournament is going to be played on grass courts, it’s a different ball game altogether. Gasquet is a far better player than his opponent on the green surfaces and thus, will certainly hold the advantage.

The only thing that can go against Gasquet is that Haase is a big hitter and he is fully capable of capitalizing on the room that would be created on the court because of the Frenchman trying to hang back. But, the question is if he would be able to do that accurately on the day.

The last time that these two players had locked horns with each other on grass court, Gasquet had steam rolled over Haase. He can do something similar again if he is at his best.

There is a big difference between the world rankings of the two players with Gasquet being 41 positions higher than his 27 year old Dutch opponent.