The second leg of the sunshine double begins on Wednesday as the Miami Open welcomes the best in the world to its grounds. Among the many intriguing first-round matchups, we get to see former World No. 3 Grigor Dimitrov square off against Raphael Collignon. As always, we at LWOT have the preview and prediction for all matches on the ATP Miami slate. But who will advance?<\/p>\n\n
ATP Miami Day 1 Predictions<\/p>\n\n
Denis Shapovalov vs Botic van de Zandschulp\nHead-to-Head: Shapovalov 1-1 van de Zandschulp\nFormer World No. 10 Denis Shapovalov has had an up-and-down start to the season, but a hardcourt Masters event offers an opportunity for the lefty to play into the second week. Botic van de Zandschulp has not won a match in over a month. I will side with the more in-form and talented Canadian.\n\nPrediction: Shapovalov in 2<\/p>\n\n
Rafael Jodar vs Yannick Hanfmann\nHead-to-Head: first meeting\n\n19-year-old Rafael Jodar is on the brink of breaking into the Top 100 for the first time. A few wins in the ATP Miami main draw would get him there. He squares off against German veteran Yannick Hanfmann. Having both advanced through qualifying, Jodar and Hanfmann have a few Miami wins under their belts. The German prefers the clay, and because of that, I will take the big-hitting teenager to pull off the slight upset. Prediction: Jodar in 3<\/p>\n\n
Marcos Giron is coming off a runner-up finish at the Phoenix Challenger, notching two top-50 wins during the week. Now back to the main tour, he squares off against young Spanish qualifier Martin Landaluce. The 20-year-old enters the main draw with confidence, coming off two upset wins in qualifying. He is undoubtedly a talented kid with a bright future, but Giron should be able to buckle down and force the young Spaniard to display consistency and rally tolerance. Prediction: Giron in 2<\/p>\n\n
Grigor Dimitrov vs Raphael Collignon\nHead-to-Head: Dimitrov 0-1 Collignon\nSince his unfortunate injury against Jannik Sinner at Wimbledon, Grigor Dimitrov has struggled to recapture much form. The 34-year-old is just 2-5 this season, and actually lost to Raphael Collignon 6-7 3-6 in Brisbane. The 24-year-old Belgian is 13-5 across all competitions this year and is finally putting together a game that translates across all surfaces. This will be a battle, but I expect Dimitrov, backed by an ATP Miami crowd that will show him love, to advance in three tight sets. Prediction: Dimitrov in 3<\/p>\n\n\n
Sources: lastwordonsports<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The second leg of the sunshine double begins on Wednesday as the Miami Open welcomes the best in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,151,166,152],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-highlights","category-matchprediction","category-news","category-tournaments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegameinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegameinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegameinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegameinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegameinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4571"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thegameinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5397,"href":"https:\/\/thegameinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4571\/revisions\/5397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegameinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegameinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegameinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegameinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}