The ninth-ranked Kei Nishikori encountered a little bit of everything heading into the third round of the Wimbledon, as he dominated Marco Cecchinato in the Round of 128, 6-2, 6-2, 6-0, and then had a rather bumpy ride in the previous round against Sergiy Stakhovsky, 6-4, 6-7(7), 6-1, 7-6(6).
As one of the elites, though, we can expect Nishikori to still keep rolling. Besides, he has encountered very minimal problems when battling Roberto Bautista Agut, who he hasn’t lost to in four meetings. In fact, the last two were straight sets victories.
Nishikori is 27-10 overall this season and 36-20 all-time on grass-held courts. He has reached the third round or better in nine of his 12 tournaments this year, reaching the finals twice.
Like his upcoming foe, world no. 19 Roberto Baustista Agut was also met with two different challenges in the previous rounds of the Wimbys. After easily dispatching Andreas Haider-Maurer in the Round of 128 via straight sets, it took him four sets to get past no. 140 Peter Gojowczyk this past Wednesday.
Tomorrow night, the road ahead is bound to get even rockier for the Spaniard, because as mentioned, he is yet to figure out Nishikori in four tries.
The first two losses were competitive since he at least took one set and looked fine for the most part, but instead of getting better as they develop more as a player, the next two meetings became worse, as he quickly dropped those matches in two sets.
There’s appeal if you look at some of Bautista Agut’s trends – 7-2 in his last nine (26-11 on the year) and 20-9 on the grass since 2013 – but he doesn’t really appear to be capable of edging out Nishikori.
Writer’s Prediction
This could again be a straight sets win for Nishikori (-260), but I also see Bautista Agut taking one set.
