Fifth seeded Jannik Sinner of Italy faces unseeded Frenchman Hugo Gaston in the Round of 16 at the 2021 Marseille Open ATP event. The match is scheduled to be played on Wednesday March 10th, 2021 at 12:50pm EST.
Who will win in this clash of the Next-Gen players? Will the Frenchman be able to upset the young Italian star?
Jannik Sinner is currently ranked #34 and has firmly established himself as a star of the ATP Tour. He is considered by many to be a future top five player, and based on his results it is hard to argue with that assessment. Already with two ATP titles under his belt at the young age of 19 he is firmly on his way and is considered one of the favorites to lift the title here in Marseille. He has started 2021 very well, winning his second ATP Title in Adelaide and while he lost in the First Round of the Australian Open it was a tight five setter with Denis Shapovalov. Sinner would have taken a huge amount of confidence from that match as it showed him that he can truly compete with the best at the big tournaments. He enters this match as the firm favorite and it would take a remarkable achievement by the young Frenchman to even make this competitive.
Hugo Gaston is also considered a future star but unlike his opponent, he has not yet began to live up to those lofty expectations. He announced himself on the world stage with a fantastic Fourth Round showing at the 2020 French Open, upsetting Stan Wawrinka and taking Dominic Thiem to five sets. While he shows a lot of promise, he has struggled to string consistent performances together on the ATP Tour and still needs to mature a bit before he can be considered a threat at this level.
This match will have only one outcome, and that is a straight sets win for Jannik Sinner. Gaston is a solid player but he has not shown that he is capable of competing on this surface and at this level yet, and I expect this to be one way traffic. Jannik Sinner to win in straight sets.