The second round matches at the 2025 Marrkaech Open will kick-start from Thursday, April 3 as Tallon Griekspoor, Luciano Darderi and Lorenzo Sonego take to court today. Get the best predictions and tips for the day from ATP Marrkaech Open 2025.
Luciano Darderi v Hugo Gaston
It’s a second round match and a third time meeting between the 57th-ranked Luciano Darderi and world number 84 Hugo Gaston. And they enter this encounter tied at 1-1 on head to head after Darderi won on the clay courts of Cordoba in 2023 before Gaston grabbed a win at Indian Wells earlier this year.
That’s a sharp indictor of how things might go here too.
Because Darderi is anything but a hardcourt player, having won a mere five matches on that surface over four seasons. On clay, he has an ATP title and three Challenger tournament wins under his belt. He also enters this match with a straight-set win over Tristan Boyer in round one here.
Contrast that with Gaston’s record which is a lot stronger on hardcourt surfaces but one must quickly add here that it’s not like he struggles on clay. Like Darderi, Gaston has also won three Challenger titles but is coming off a poor clay court season so far.
Gaston did win his opener here against Juan Manuel Cerundolo but it took him three sets and it had come on the back of three successive clay-court losses in Buenos Aires, Rio and Santiago.
Darderi v Boyer Tip: Darderi to win: 3/5
Tallon Griekspoor v Pablo Carreno Busta
World number 37 Tallon Griekspoor will face off against the 110th-ranked Pablo Carreno Busta in what will be their second career meeting. The first had come at the 2022 Australian Open in which Carreno Busta had won in five sets.
With a first round bye for him, Griekspoor will now be featuring in his first match on clay for this season. It’s a surface that has held Griekspoor in a great stead at the lower level of tennis with the Dutchman having won nine of his 11 Challenger titles on this surface.
Griekspoor also reached the third round at both, the Madrid Masters and French Open last year. He now faces his Spanish opponent whose ranking fell so drastically because of his fitness issues that he has been forced to play Challenger events through most part of this season.
He has already won a couple of those titles, both of which came in hardcourt competitions, but more recently Carreno Busta also reached the quarterfinal of the Girona Challenger on clay. Interestingly, he lost to Marin Cilic in that one – a player whose record on clay isn’t the best either.
Griekspoor v Carreno Busta Tip: Griekspoor to win: 7/11
Lorenzo Sonego v Vit Kopriva
Second seeded Lorenzo Sonego will face the 106th-ranked Vit Kopriva for the first time in his career and starts a 3/5 favourite. That’s rather long odds for a player ranked nearly 70 places ahead of Kopriva and for someone who has featured in this competition twice before and made the quarterfinals both times.
Sonego, however, will be playing his first clay court match of the season having received a first round bye here. On the other hand, Kopriva is coming off not only a first round win over Borna Gojo here but had also grabbed a title at the Neapol Challenger before that.
In that tournament, Kopriva had defeated Luciano Darderi in the final, an indictor he has the game to take down some of the other top 50 players on this surface.
Which is why we could see a bit of a fight here and the match could go into the third set.
Sonego v Kopriva Tip: Three sets in the match: 6/5
