Clash of indoor specialists
In the ATP event in St. Petersburg, we have two indoor tennis lovers facing each other today. Both Egor Gerasimov from Belarus and Adrian Mannarino from France love these faster indoor courts and can be considered indoor specialists.
Year after year, they take every chance to play as many indoor events as possible. This results in a pretty big number of matches played in their careers. Gerasimov's record is at 107-65 while Mannarino has 180 wins and 122 losses under his belt. That means both are winning around 60% of their matches indoors.
Mannarino a class above
Both players have several tournament wins under their belt at Challenger level with Gerasimov winning two events and Mannarino lifting the trophy six times. Apart from that, the French also made a run to the finals at last year's ATP event in Moscow.
As Gerasimov is mainly playing at Challenger events or has to qualify for ATP main draws, his biggest achievement came about in the same tournament. Guess who he lost to in the quarterfinals... Mannarino won last year's match 7-6 6-3.
All these are stats of indoor hard court matches, but looking at their overall performances, Adrian Mannarino clearly comes out on top as well. He's a consistent member of the top 100 for more than five years now with the majority of time spent inside the top 50. Gerasimov on the contrary never made it to the top 100 before. In another previous meeting in 2014, Mannarino thrashed Gerasimov 6-3 6-1 on outdoor hard courts in Tashkent.
Superior player to advance
Rankings never tell you the whole story, but Mannarino is the more skilled and consistent player. He's well rested and ready to go on another run indoors. As often happens, Gerasimov had to go through qualies here in St. Petersburg, where he beat Tabilo and Safiullin. In their first round matches, both players won 7-5 6-2 with Gerasimov beating Rosol and Mannarino getting the better of Travaglia.
While both these wins are an indicator of good form, I feel confirmed that Mannarino is motivated. Gerasimov played five matches in the last five days and even if that shouldn't be too big of an issue, I can't see him beating a superior player who also loves to play indoors.
