Internazionali BNL d'Italia Rome Men's Final Preview: Djokovic vs Schwartzman

ATP
Monday, 21 September 2020 at 13:50
Djokovic Novak MonteCarlo2017

Novak Djokovic and Diego Schwartzman will battle for the first claycourt title of the 2020 season at the Internazionali BNL d'Italia in Rome.

A lot of fans won't get a final they wished for at the 2020 Internazionali BNL d'Italia in Rome. The 2019 champion, Rafael Nadal was eliminated and so Novak Djokovic, who reached the final will meet a different opponent in the final this year. However, this fact won't make this match any less interesting as the Serbian will take on Diego Schwartzman, a player that eliminated Nadal in the quarterfinals.
And it was the short Argentinian that Djokovic needed to battle past last year in Rome to get to the final. Now, they meet one step further as they are both looking to get their first claycourt title of the 2020 season. While Djokovic lost only one set on his way to the final this year against Koepfer, Schwartzman lost two, once against Hurkacz and once against Shapovalov.
The Serbian also leads H2H 4-0 but Schwartzman already showed that this statistic doesn't mean anything when he defeated Nadal after losing the previous 9 matches. Moreover, looking closer at the numbers, Djokovic defeated Schwartzman twice on the hardcourt Grand Slam tournament without losing a set.
On the other hand, the other two times they met, they played on the claycourt and Schwartzman always took the match to the deciding set. First, it was at the 2017 Roland Garros when the Argentinian even led 2-1 but later lost the match. Last year in Rome, Schwartzman also forced the deciding set but again failed to win the match.
The odds seem to be with the world number 1, however, Schwartzman proved many times that he's a player that can surprise in any match, particularly on the clay.
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