Service: MotD: Maxi torture against comebacker Kyrgios – presented by LeoVegas Sport

A special game awaits Maximilian Marterer in Stuttgart on Thursday: a duel against the unpredictable Australian Nick Kyrgios – “quite a chunk”, as Torterer himself says.

Not the best tennis played – but in the end: Maximilian Marterer fought through against Lucky Loser Viktor Galovic on Wednesday. “I’m happy to have mastered that, it was my first winning grass court match on the Tour,” said the 22-year-old afterwards. This is ultimately due more to the rarity of the oldest tennis surface in the tournament calendar, because grass and torture have been fitting for a long time. “Wimbledon was my best Grand Slam tournament as a teenager,” he recalled.

The general form of the world ranking-50th in the last weeks: quite impressive. Third round Melbourne, semi-final Munich, round of 16 Roland Garros, where he bravely defended himself against Rafael Nadal and even forced the Matador from Manacor into a tiebreak in set three. Torture is higher than ever before in the ranking, even though he only won his first main field ATP match in Sofia this season. Slowly but steadily upwards – this is how one could describe the path of torture.

Now it’s up to Nick Kyrgios of the same age, who has caused some excitement on the big stage in recent years – both positively and negatively. “A very good player with a lot more experience,” says Marterer, describing the Australian. “I may have to take advantage of the fact that he’s been away for a long time and doesn’t have much match practice.”

Because Kyrgios himself is competing in the singles again for the first time since April, problems at the elbow caused time and time again for downtime. A double test run in Lyon ended with the title, but afterwards he cancelled the French Open at short notice. In Stuttgart Kyrgios is in position four and had a walk-through to start.

The fact that Kyrgios can play on grass was shown for the first time in 2014, when he shot Rafael Nadal from St. Wimbledon’s lawn in the round of 16 as number 144 in the world, and since then he has been considered possibly the greatest tennis talent – as a rough diamond, although he still needs to be sharpened. Listless appearances and scandals always accompany Kyrgios, despite the intention to improve. The man from Canberra celebrates his premiere at Weissenhof, and how close genius and madness still lie together, he showed on Wednesday during training, in which he tried himself towards the end exclusively more as a trickshot king than as a tennis player.

LeoVegas Sport, one of the leading sports betting providers, sees Kyrgios as favourites despite time out: He scored 1.4 for a win, Maxi Marterer is listed at 2.95.

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