Dubai Championships: Djokovic vs Machac Tennis Prediction

TennisSection previews the 2023 Dubai Championships as Novak Djokovic takes on Tomas Machac in the first round on Tuesday, February 28, 2023.

Will Novak Djokovic get his 2023 Dubai Championships campaign off to a winning start? Or will Tomas Machac take a leaf out of Jiri Vesely’s playbook and stun the five-time champion?

Novak Djokovic will be playing for the first time since capturing his 22nd Grand Slam title and a 10th Australian Open at the end of January. He is 12-0 at the start of 2023 and comes into the Dubai Championships having recovered from the hamstring injury that threatened to derail his Australian summer. Djokovic will play Czech qualifier Tomas Machac and knows all too well the danger of facing Czech opponents, having lost to Jiri Vesely 12 months ago in Dubai. So he won’t be treating this match as a cakewalk.

Tomas Machac, meanwhile, qualified for the Dubai Championships, beating Quentin Halys 7-6 7-6 at the weekend. He has not won a main draw match in 2023 on the ATP Tour, and his chances of doing so this week are very slim. Barring the extraordinary, it will be the World No. 1 who will power through to the second round. But stranger things have happened and Machac won’t back down from a fight.

Novak Djokovic and Tomas Machac have not played each other on the ATP Tour. Tuesday’s match at the Dubai Championships will be their first official meeting. Djokovic is a colossal favorite to make it to the second round. He has fully recovered from that 3cm hamstring tear he picked up in Adelaide that briefly threatened to derail his Australian Open campaign. With that said, the World No. 1 should cruise at a canter.