Holger Rune vs Andrey Rublev Prediction: Can Andrey win his first tournament of the season?

Holger Rune and Andrey Rublev will meet in the final of the Monte Carlo Masters. The boys have played twice before in the tour, and the confrontation score is 1-1, despite such statistics, bookmakers consider the Dane to be the big favorite for the match.

Rune will play his fourth match at the Masters. The fact is that in the third round, Berrettini withdrew from the tournament. Before that, the Dane beat Dominic Thiem. After that, he was stronger than Daniil Medvedev and Jannik Sinner. The match against the Italian was difficult for Holger; Jannick easily won the first set 6:1, but this did not break the Scandinavian. On the contrary, it made him angry. In the next two games, Rune won with the same score of 7:5. It is worth noting that in case of victory in the final, Holger Rune will overtake Andrey Rublev in the ranking list and move up to sixth place.

Andrey needs to win the final, as this will help him win his first tournament of 2023 and maintain his sixth place in the rankings. Moreover, he will strengthen his position decently and even come close to Tsitsipas. Unlike Rune, Rublev played four full matches in Monaco, knocking Munar, Khachanov, Struff, and Fritz out of the draw. Against the American, he had to play three sets. Moreover, Andrey lost the first game against Taylor 5-7 but won the next two sets. Andrey served twice on the court and won 65% of points on his first serve and 50% on his second serve.

Rune and Rublev have played each other twice. The first match was won 2-0 by the Dane in Paris in 2022. Two months later the two men met again, this time on the court of the Australian Open, and Andrey won that meeting in five sets at the last 16 stage. The two men did not meet on the clay.

Bookmakers think Rune is a big enough favorite, the Dane is slightly overrated, and the line should be more even. Andrey was excellent at the Monaco Masters, knocking out Khachanov, Struff, and Fritz, three strong opponents. Rune also had strong opponents. However, the Dane got lucky. Berrettini withdrew from the tournament, and for this reason, Rune kept his game against Medvedev fresh. At the same time, Daniil, the day before, had an extremely difficult match against Zverev, and the Russian did not have enough strength to face the Dane. But against Sinner, more precisely the second and third sets, Holger played well. In the upcoming game, small differences will decide a lot, and the guys are by and large equal in class, which is confirmed not only by the current ATP ranking but also by their head-to-head encounter statistics. In this situation, we choose to favor the outsider, betting on Andrey Rublev.

• W2 for 2.40;
• Handicap 2 (3.5) for 1.86;
• Correct score 1:2 for 5.00.

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