Taisei Ichikawa vs Luca Nardi Prediction & Betting Tips - Kobe, Japan

Prediction published on 12/11/2023, 18:39  by Oluwafemi Oyebade | Modified on 12/11/2023 at 19:39 in Tennis Predictions

Wild card Taisei Ichikawa and third seed Luca Nardi will meet on Tuesday in the first round of the Hard Court Challenger Tour in Kobe. The winner goes into the second round against either Unseeded Moez Echargui or a qualifier/lucky loser. yet to be determined. The 20-year-old Italian is now 128h in the live ranking up 15 places on the last published list. His career high is 116th achieved in August of this year. The young, talented player has had an impressive year both on the Challenger Tour and the main ATP Tour. That's taken him to 13th in the Live NextGen rankings though he's unlikely to qualify for the year-end finals. Nardi continued his strong performance in the Matsuyama Challenger and at the weekend he won his fifth Challenger by defeating the top-seeded Japanese Taro Daniel.  The Italian has reached at least the last four in two of his last three Challenger Tour evnets and is on a five-match winning streak, This follows on from He won three Challenger titles in 2022. In August 2023, he won his fourth Challenger title in Porto, where he was seeded fourth, defeating the unseeded Portuguese Joao Sousa in the final.

Wild card Taisei Ichikawa comes into this tournament in poor form after losing his last two matches in straight sets and winning only seven games. The 22-year-old Japanese player is 786th in the live ranking and his career high is 740th achieved three years ago. Ichikawa has lost three of his last four matches played on hard surfaces. In the first round of the M25 ITF tournament, Ichikawa lost without winning a set to unseeded Taiyo Yamanaka. Eighth seeded Ichikawa's last win was in September, when he won without dropping a set in the first round of the M25 Takasaki tournament against Yunseok Jang. Ichikawa reached the last eight of the tournament but lost to the Japanese Hikaru Shiraishi. but only had to win one match to get that far.