Qualifier Laslo Djere faces unseeded Pedro Martinez in the first round of the Stockholm Open, with the winner set to play fourth seed Taylor Fritz.
Djere is currently ranked 113th, necessitating his participation in two qualifying matches to reach the main draw. He lost the second set of his opening match to Adrian Andreev but won the decider 6-0. He followed this with a straightforward straight sets victory over Hamad Medjedovic, dropping just seven games. Despite being ranked 131st in the live rankings, he is defending points from last year’s semi-final appearance in this tournament.
Djere also reached the semi-finals in his most recent Challenger event last month on clay. This marks his first hard court tournament since retiring in the third set against Novak Djokovic in the second round of the US Open. He has yet to win consecutive matches in the main draw of an ATP Tour hard court event in 2024 and has a 2-0 record against Martinez, with one of those victories on hard courts.
Pedro Martinez holds the world number 39 ranking, largely due to his clay court success. He recently won a Challenger event in Valencia, though he did not face any opponents ranked in the top 120. His last hard court appearance was at the Shanghai Masters, where he lost in the first round to Jakub Mensik. Martinez has only won two of his last nine matches on hard courts.
We predict Djere will win this match.