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RG was never a tournament that got the best out of these two

Both Baghdatis and Karlović lack the rhythm. The Cypriot passed the second round of Roland Garros only twice, and Ivo only once - last season. All three matches they played against each other were indoors, so this is a different situation

PBZ Zagreb Indoors

A bad period came for Ivo Karlović. The bar was raised high, but his serve wasn't as convincing as it could have been in the last few months, so the results suffered. The statistics tell you everything.

The Croatian player got 12 ATP wins till Acapulco. What's more important is that his serve was untouched in those 17 duels. After that, he played four tournaments and five matches, and never managed to keep his serve throughout the entire match. It might be normal for someone else, but not for Ivo who bases his whole tennis on keeping the serve.

Of course, the transition to clay didn't help. He played only two tournaments and got only one win. It was in Zagreb derby against Borna Ćorić who always had problems with Ivo's slice. After that, he didn't fare well against Vesely who won routinely. Ivo lost a break in that match. He had no luck in Madrid, either. He had a tough opponent, Gasquet, but was also sick and couldn't play better, which mean another routine defeat.

- Me in Madrid in the last six years: 2010 Achilles tendon surgeries, '11 bronchitises, '12 slippery blue clay, '13 encephalitis, '14 didn't get to the main lot, '15 stomach virus - Karlović Tweeted after the duel against the French.

After Madrid, Karlović cancelled Rome, and didn't play the week before Roland Garros. Stomach virus is something that can ruin a player in a single week, but Ivo should be fine by now. Still, not playing definitely messed his rhythm. If nothing, he's got nice memories from the last year's Roland Garros. He got the best result of his career by getting placed to the third round by beating Dimitrov and Haider-Maurer. He was forced to forfeit to Anderson, though. We should add that he came to Paris right after the Dusseldorf final last year, which means he was in a much better rhythm than he is now.

Baghdatis's rhythm isn't all well, either. He jacked up his ranking with the challengers last year, where he wasn't beat the entire season. He continued mixing the challengers with the ATP matches in 2015, but he just stopped after Miami. Up until that tournament, he had nice seven wins. But after that, a break.

He played like he didn't even want to live in Le Gosier, and he took a three week break afterwards, to then go play clay where he didn't show anything, really. He got one win against Darcis, then lost to Garcia- Lopez, as expected. Last week, he played Geneva and took a set from Bellucci, but he didn't really show much in that duel. The Brazilian lost the first set because of his own crazy ways, but he saved his serve in the next two, so his win wasn't that questionable.

In general, clay was never a type of court that got the best out of Baghdatis. No doubt he himself can't wait for the clay part of the season to end, and the grass to begin. Ivo probably feels the same. Both lack the rhythm, and clay isn't the type of court where they can try and get that rhythm back.