Tournament Preview 2024 Croatia Open Umag as Holger Rune, Andrey Rublev and Lorenzo Musetti battle in Olympic Games precursor

The Croatian Open Umag is an ATP 250 event that will run from July 21st to 27th at the ITC Stella Maris in the Croatian resort town of Umag as our preview looks ahead to the action. The tournament will feature some big names such as Andrey Rublev, Holger Rune, and Lorenzo Musetti, so let’s take a look at what might happen at this event.

This is one of the most popular smaller events on the tennis Tour, and you only need to look at the list of previous winners to understand. Players like Carlos Moya, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Marin Cilic, Fabio Fognini, Dominic Thiem, Andrey Rublev, Carlos Alcaraz, and Jannik Sinner have all won this event over the years, and that's a lineup of champions that would be fitting for an ATP 500 event let alone an ATP 250 event.

Part of that is obviously the location, as the host town is a resort town that is just beautiful overall. You have tons of stuff to do outside of tennis and wonderful beaches, and it's pretty good to play tennis as well. The climate is also solid, and the facilities are top-notch, which makes it an easy decision to play here. It’s also one of the final clay events of the year, so players who love that surface flock here to get one more chance at some clay tennis. That’s also the case this year, as most of the players who are part of the draw are really good on clay and love to play on that surface.

Last year’s event featured a somewhat surprising final between Alexei Popyrin and Stan Wawrinka, the former of which won. Popyrin will be back this year, as he hopes to have a good run again, though defending the trophy will be somewhat complicated as the draw is much stronger this year compared to last year. He didn't have multiple players that have been or are close to the Top 10 to wrest with this year, but hey, that's tennis. The start will be against Jakub Mensik, who is a very tricky player to face, and if he wins, he will face Luciano Darderi in the 2nd round. That will be tough because Darderi has been a standout performer on the clay this year, winning his maiden ATP trophy earlier this year.

The top seed and technically most likely to win the event is Andrey Rublev, who was champion here in 2017 when he beat Paolo Lorenzi in two sets. Rublev hasn’t had a good time on the courts lately, losing a couple of winnable matches and showing visible signs of frustration because of it.

He has a 1st round BYE in Umag, so he’ll have time to get ready, which should be beneficial as he’ll be the huge favourite regardless of whether he faces Luka Mikrut in that 2nd round or Camilo Carabelli. Should he win that one, he might have to face Tomas Machac in the next one, which certainly won’t be easy either.

On the opposite side of the draw and form spectrum, we have Lorenzo Musetti, who has been amazing lately with a superb run in London at Wimbledon. The Italian made the semi-final there, losing to Novak Djokovic, but it’s a wonderful run that certainly boosted his confidence.

He now has a chance to extend that great run on his favourite surface at an event where he’s technically the top name. Yes, Rublev is the top seed, but he’s not playing on the same level right now, and if they faced each other, then Musetti would have a decent chance of winning the match.

Holger Rune Trying to find his place

It’s been a very weird season for Holger Rune, the third seed at this event. The Danish player hasn’t really had a spectacular year because most of his results have been fine, but not really what they were last year. He crushed the clay season last year, while this year, it’s been mostly fine.

Can he find something special here in Umag at the end of the clay season or will he have to wait for a surface change to find something special. The draw is certainly favourable as he’ll face either Fabio Fognini or Luca van Assche in the 2nd round, both players that he should beat comfortably on any given day. A poor performance though could get him in trouble against both players so he needs to be careful.

Besides these nominal favourites, we also have a couple of big names who will be waiting for their chance, should it come. Chiefly among them is 4th seed Francisco Cerundolo, a wonderful player, albeit very streaky. On his best day, the Argentine can beat anyone, which he showed at this year’s Roland Garros, where he played really well.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t play his best tennis regularly, but he’s still a player to watch as he could put together an impressive run. Another player who could do some stuff is Matteo Arnaldi. The Italian is a very aggressive player who can hit the ball as well as anybody, making him very dangerous on clay.

He hasn’t had a superb year, but he’s always capable of stunning a few opponents, and the conditions in Umag will certainly help him with that. If he finds his confidence and the shots hit, he can beat anybody in this draw.

Mariano Navone is another player to watch because he, too, has been a standout on clay this year. A maiden ATP trophy during the Golden Slam and some nice follow-up performances certainly make him a player worth closely watching. Just a few days ago, he pushed Rafael Nadal to the edge in Bastad, forcing him to play four hours, so that kind of stamina and his very solid backhand could go a long way here.

Overall it’s going to be a very interesting match despite running literally in the week before the Olympis. Plenty of big names have opted to play at the event which should make for a really interesting event with the way the form of some of the players has shaped up.