ITF W25 Reims - Will power prevail?

Unfortunately, the risks we took in Ostrava have not been rewarded, but both Alex de Minaur and Daniel Evans reached the quarterfials in Antwerp. Evans faces Karen Khachanov who had major problems to get past Belgian youngster Zizou Bergs and the Demon now meets Marcos Giron who beat an expectedly out of shape David Goffin yesterday.

Promising Players at Lower Levels

Apart from the spotlights, there is some more great indoor tennis to be played. In Hamburg's ITF M25 tournament, two top prospects face each other in Anton Matusevich and Kacper Zuk while at the ITF W25 in Reims, we have a lot of feelgood stories to tell about the eight quarterfinalists. Cagla Buyukakcay and Oceane Dodin continue their good 2020 seasons and especially Dodin seems to finally live up to her potential after she had to deal with dizziness for the last few years. A lot of youngsters are showing their great talent here as well in Robin Montgomery, Clara Burel and Xinyu Wang and former top 20 player Ana Konjuh is also finally getting back on track. The Croatian is still only 22, but it seems like she's been away forever, dealing with an ongoing elbow injury and a lot of surgeries.

Liudmila Samsonova takes on Harriet Dart in the first quarterfinal of the day in what is another matchup of promising players. Both showed some good form here in Reims and Dart already reached the final at the W25 event in Cherbourg last week when she lost to Kaia Kanepi in the final. This week, the 24-year-old Brit beat Selena Janicijevic and Harmony Tan both with a scoreline of 6-3 6-3 in the first two rounds. Samsonova got the better of Chloe Paquet 6-4 7-6 and crushed another British youngster in Francesca Jones 6-2 6-1 yesterday.

Surface Suiting Samsonova

When you only look at numbers and matches played, you might think that Samsonova is a clay court player and the fact that she only lost in three sets to eventual runner-up Sofia Kenin at the French Open could underline that narrative. Growing up in Italy, the Russian certainly learned how to play on slower surfaces and more importantly how to construct points properly. She played almost 60% of her pro matches on clay, but I was always looking forward to see her on hard courts more often as I think her game is suited even better for faster surfaces.

Samsonova has a good serve and powerful groundstrokes by which she tries to dominate from the baseline. Her defense is still vulnerable, but the same can be said about today's opponent. When comparing the two players, I don't see anything Samsonova can do that Dart can do better and the Russian possessing more power should also help her on these courts. She's also winning 67% of her matches indoors, so it's really not like she doesn't know how to play outside of clay. The odds are already dropping slowly, so I'll take the 1.82 on offer and hope for Samsonova to continue her good run here in Reims.