The cinch Championships title will have a new name on it on Sunday when the final of the ATP 500 event takes place on the Centre Court at the Queens Club in London when Tommy Paul goes up against Lorenzo Musetti.
Neither of these men have even been in the final at Queens in the past so they will be treading new ground in the popular Wimbledon warm up. The winner here will head to SW19 in eight days with the ultimate confidence boost.
Tommy Paul
Tommy Paul has made it through to this final without having faced a seeded player and with Musetti not a seed either the American will be hoping that he wins the title having not come up against one of the better players on paper heading into the week. Top be fair to him though he has taken on a couple of form horses having got the better of the Stuttgart champion last week in Jack Draper and the man who made the final of the other event a week ago in Seb Korda in the semi-final.
You can tell that Paul isn’t a natural grass court player because he doesn’t really protect his serve brilliantly and he is rarely at the net to finish points off. He is happy to get involved in baseline rallies and against the better players I’m not sure that carries much weight. Only Draper has taken a set off him this week though so regardless of the questionable strength of his opposition, Paul has seen them all off emphatically.
Lorenzo Musetti
Lorenzi Musetti has had a soft schedule since the opening round but a large reason for that is it was he who got rid of the second seed Alex de Minaur in the first match. He has had to battle to make it through this week but the one thing you would have to say about the Italian is when the crunch moments have come he has played really well and got the job done. He’ll need to do that again if he is going to land a first grass court title.
Musetti has had to battle like he has in this tournament because he also hasn’t got a huge serve and he doesn’t protect it massively well either. He is bidding to emulate his fellow Italian player Matteo Berrettini and win this tournament but he would do it differently to how he won it. Berrettini bombed down ace after ace but that isn’t likely to happen with Musetti so he’ll need to hit the ball cleanly if he is going to come out on top here.
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Head-to-head
There isn’t a huge amount of previous history to go by for these two because this will be the first time in their career that they have met.
Betting
I’m not sure who I fancy to win this final. I would probably side with Paul as the higher ranked player but he is much shorter than I expected him to be but I don’t really trust the consistency, of lack of it, to back Musetti to get the better of him. At the same time I wouldn’t want to oppose the Italian because he has battled really hard this week and you sense that is the least he’ll do in this final. There is a side market bet that I like for this one though.
That comes in the form of the aces where the line is 9.5 but with neither of these players having a particularly strong serve I’m not sure we are going to see that many aces. These two don’t have serves which can be placed on the lines or the power to naturally smash it past the opponent. In their semi-finals Paul send down five aces whereas Musetti only hit two aces in three sets of tennis. This might not be the longest final anyway if the odds are right so I’ll play the under on the ace count.
Tips
Back Under 9.5 aces for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with Bet365
