Alex de Minaur vs Dominik Koepfer Mifel Tennis Open Preview and Expert Tip: Aussie Alex de Minaur to Contest the Final in Mexico

Alex de Minaur vs Dominik Koepfer (Mifel Tennis Open): Friday, August 4th

Laslo Djere just keeps winning. The improvements he’s made, along with his natural feel for clay courts has been really apparent in the last few weeks, as his serve has been nearly untouchable.

Let’s see if we can replicate the success of the last two days from the men’s tips with another winner from the tennis on the ATP Tour.

Friday night brings the semifinals from the Mifel Tennis Open in Los Cabos, Mexico. Alex de Minaur vs Dominik Koepfer is the match I want to focus on.

Alex de Minaur vs Dominik Koepfer Expert Tip

I think the quality in class here favours the world No. 19 a bit too much in this one. The matchup also looks good for him, as a relatively underpowered Koepfer should struggle to hit through the slower courts and de Minaur’s defences. Even with the angles he can produce, de Minaur’s elite at covering the court and shouldn’t have many issues.

I’m not going to go too large with my staking here, but I think this is the rare occasion when one could justify a handicap up in the -5 to -5.5-game range in men’s tennis on a hard court.

Read on for more expert insights.

• Expert Tip: de Minaur -4.5 Games at 2.00 with Bet365, using 2/10 stakes.

Alex de Minaur Recent Form

It’s been a solid few weeks leading into the coming fortnight of Masters 1000 events for de Minaur. After reaching the quarterfinals in Atlanta – where he was taken out in three sets, only by a powerful Ugo Humbert playing at the absolute top of his game – the 24-year-old has been impressive in his run to the semis so far in Mexico.

His opening match was a little tumultuous, as his serve didn’t hold up as well as I’m sure he would’ve liked, but he’s rebounded well, crushing his opposition in the second round and then outlasting Tommy Paul in the quarterfinals, despite a barrage of powerful forehands and strong shotmaking from the talented American.

With some of the best defending, movement and consistency in the men’s game, de Minaur is well-positioned for success here. Against an underpowered opponent, it’s hard to see how he’ll struggle against Koepfer, unless he lands a disappointingly low number of his first serves and commits an uncharacteristic number of unforced errors.

Dominik Koepfer Recent Form

Similar to de Minaur, Koepfer has put in two strong weeks of work in Atlanta and Los Cabos. Enough so, that he’ll likely be in the top-80 come Monday in the world rankings.

With a first serve that has enough pace and he places very well, along with rugged consistency from the baseline, Koepfer has been able to outlast many opponents this week in Mexico.

The competition though, does somewhat lack talent. Tomas Barrios Vera is by no means a hard-court expert, James Duckworth prefers quicker surfaces and has been error prone at his last three events and Aleksandar Kovacevic not only prefers quicker hard courts, but also played three hours the night before their match and needed a slew of medical timeouts in both his second round and quarterfinal contests.

As much as I respect his play, I just don’t think he has the game style to hurt de Minaur and the lone match he played against someone with a strong game that is playing well, he lost by seven games to J.J. Wolf last week.

Pedro Cachin vs Laslo Djere H2H – Stat of the Match

The lone meeting between these two came back in 2020 in Rome, when Koepfer snuck out a win in a tight third set against the Aussie. It’s worth noting that the drop in de Minaur’s level from hard courts to clay is more precipitous than Koepfer’s, and it may be worth taking that result with a grain of salt (as it is all head-to-head records on different surfaces from a few years ago).

As for our stat of the day, I want to hone in on the hold plus break percentages of these two on hard courts this season.

Not only does de Minaur lead in that department by a few points, but he’s posted more impressive numbers (particularly in his break percentage), despite having played much bigger events in 2023.

The German’s only hard-court tournaments at tour level this season have come in the last two weeks in Atlanta and now in Los Cabos. Looking at who he’s played, there is very little impressive about being in the 105% range when adding up the hold and break rates.

Odds as at 2:00 pm UK Time on August 4th, 2023. Odds may now differ.

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