Baghdatis (+ 1,5 games) -Muller We are in the quarterfinals of the Stockholm tournament with Pagdati facing Muller from Luxembourg in the last match of the day. The two tennis players are close to the ranking with Muller being at No. 38 and Marco a few places below at No. 38.
Marcos in Asia lost in the 2nd round to Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur from Per and Pospisil in closed matches that were judged in the 3rd set and lost the opportunity to claim a grand semifinal in a 500m tournament. In Stockholm he has a title from the distant 2009 while overall always good results. This year, he started with two clear victories over Kerry and Tomic with the first set in both games being judged at the tie break and then Marcos cleared easily.
Mueller relies heavily on service that is strong but also quite technical. Mueller two weeks ago reached the semifinals in Tokyo where he lost to the later winner Wawrinka 2-0 while last week in Shanghai he had a difficult draw and lost in the first round. In the first two rounds in Stockholm he had passable opponents (Berer, Millman) and reached the quarterfinals without significant problems.
The two tennis players have faced each other once in the past 3 months ago in the semifinals in Atlanta with Pagdati taking the victory with 2-1. I think the odds are unfair to Marco who has played two big matches in Sweden and has thrown out tennis players. (Kerry, Tomic) with good results in indoor tournaments. Given that we will hardly see many breaks, the +1,5 handicap in favor of Markos seems like a good choice, although the Cypriot champion is quite unstable for the last 2-3 years.
