- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The first round of the 2015 US Open continues when big serving Australian Sam Groth looks to back up a decent Wimbledon campaign in what will be a difficult challenge against Alexandr Dolgopolov from the Ukraine.
Join The Roar for live scores of this match up from around 6am (AEST) or following the Janowicz vs Busta match on court four.
Groth’s recent form has been average to say the least since the hard court season started. After his third-round exit at Wimbledon he came back to Australia to play in the Davis Cup, helping Australia through to the next round.
Since then he has participated in four tournaments on hard courts only going past the second round once. He has lost a number of games that he really should have won and as such will probably be down on confidence. This however is almost to be expected as traditionally he has struggled on the hard court.
This will be Groth’s second US Open with a second round exit in his first crack at it last year. He has had a successful sort of season though making the third round at both Wimbledon and the Australian Open this year.
Dolgopolov meanwhile has had four shots at the US Open, with a fourth round exit being his best performance back in 2011. Interestingly he didn’t participate in the event last year and he has only ever been knocked out in the first round once.
His recent form has had some brilliant moments with big name wins, however has been brought back to earth with some ordinary losses to finish his run at certain hard court tournaments. For example his last match was a first round loss to Thanasi Kokkinakis but in the tournament before that he made the semi finals beating the likes of Bernard Tomic and Thomaz Berdych.
The hard court is one of the better surfaces for Dolgopolov to play on, with the winning percentage basically in line with that of his career winning percentage. Statistically, he only goes better on clay courts.
Groth and Dolgopolov have met on two occasions with Dolgopolov winning on both occasions and both times in a fairly convincing matter. The first time was last year in Groth’s first Wimbledon campaign as he suffered a straight set loss, before earlier this year after grabbing a set Dolgopolov won the final set 6-0 in a dominant display.
Prediction: This one looks like it could be one of the closer matches of the opening round at the US Open. If Groth gets his serve perfect he might have a shot, but it looks like he will go down based on recent results. I would love however, for Groth to prove me wrong.
Dolgopolov in five sets.
With that, be sure to join The Roar for live scores from around 6am (AEST) or following the Janowicz vs Busta game and if you are following along feel free to leave your comments in the section below!