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Mathieu and Sijsling are in completely different situations now. Mathieu gained a lot of self-confidence during the last two weeks at home challengers, playing one semi-finals and indoor finals last week. He is here by invitation. Sijsling is playing well in indoor conditions, but his tennis is in a major crisis. He admitted to that after six losses in a row, and he opened his soul. He said he felt like he didn't know how to play anymore. He was supposed to play in the Davis Cup but he refused because he wasn't mentally ready. He was already eliminated in the doubles tournament here and I don't believe he will start playing better. The bet would be stronger if Mathieu didn't have a bad score at ATP tournaments this year, but we know the reason for that. He dropped one level in the last weeks, and that tactics already worked prior to Nice where he reached the ATP quarter-finals. Details

It's clearly seen from the preview why De Voest, by some miracle, decided to play on the clay court challenger. During the weekend he was defending the honor of his national team on Davis Cup in Slovenia. Not only did he lose both matches, but he was out of breaks on day one. It didn't help that Rola stepped in for Zemlja. Rola himself was surprised with such a win. De Voest's interest in clay courts is visible out of his number of performances. Since last year he had only three clay court tournaments, and each time he lost in that handicap. Three months ago he took away five games from Sergeyev. Diez is a Canadian who is trained by a Spaniard and who prefers clay. He's very good in the futures where he collected a couple of titles, and he had a solid performance on the challengers. Last week he came up to the quarter-finals. He will be tossing and kicking for a victory here, which we don't expect from the South African. The 1100 euros (the first round fund) will come in handy for trip expenses. Details

De Schepper is not in a good form recently and he has series of defeats. Huta Galung played on clay (indoors) last weekend. It is hard to predict who will win today. I expect them both win most of their own service games. Huta knows how to play indoor tournaments and he has shown exactly that in the first part of the season in France. De Schepper and Huta Galung have met in the finals of an indoor challenger and they played a 36-games long match. Only one of the service games ended up with a break. In the last 10 matches the French player has played only once under the stated margin. I expect them both to start the match cautiously and to focus on winning their own service games. Details

Panfil has lately been playing above his ranking. He has two challenger quarterfinals behind him, and he won against Gojowczyk and younger Melzer on his last home tournament. They are far better players than the Spaniard he is facing today. He was very convincing in the qualifiers for this tournament and he seems to be full of confidence because he is playing better than he did in the first half of the season. Checa-Calvo doesn't have a challenger win on clay in the last two seasons. He probably did some calculations here in the last round of the qualifiers, because he knew he has a secured entry as a lucky loser, but that is not very important. His latest defeats on this type of challengers clearly suggest that he lacks the game for this level, and he also has problems with left-handed players like Panfil. Against them he has 1-4 ratio on challengers, and he also has negative ratio on the futures (11-18) where the competition is significantly weaker. Last year Panfil made it to the second round here. Everything is pointing to home player's win, and he is on a roll. Details

Stebe opted for a weaker Challenger tournament this week, but he showed that he is better than his competition in Morocco. He reached the finals without dropping a set with very convincing victories. He won every match below this limit. He was self-critical yesterday due to a couple of lost serves, even though his opponent won a total of four games. That just proves that he is aiming for perfection this week. Reuter is playing his first Challenger finals and he fought and 18-year-old for two and a half hours yesterday. His opponent did 13 double faults, yet was still very dangerous throughout the match. Stebe should realistically be in the Top 100, both by quality and by playing, and is one class above the others. He will prove it today, just like he did in the last four matches. Since it is the finals, I expect an even less relaxed approach. Details

Ecuador doesn't stand a chance in Switzerland and anything but a 3-0 result for the Swiss after the first two days would be a surprise. Campozano has not played a tournament match in over a month, even though he didn't reveal why. He mostly plays on clay and very, very rarely on hard courts. The last time he played on such a surface was in a local challenger, and he won only one game against a considerably weaker opponent than Chiudinelli. Besides that, the only way the Ecuadorian gets to play indoors is during the Davis Cup. Since 2008. he has only played one indoor match, a dead-rubber against Veić in Croatia. I expect the Swiss to win in straight sets, but I have decided to go with the handicap instead because I believe he can cover the spread with one good set. After Wimbledon he has played in two challenger semi-finals on hard courts. Also, he will be relaxed because Wawrinka will surely win the first match of the day. He is definitely better suited for indoor surfaces, and he should definitely win his points with more ease. Details