Marco Cecchinato vs Denis Istomin Tennis Prediction

The fourth seed Marco Cecchinato got a first-round bye and will begin his debut Eastbourne campaign on Wednesday. This will be the Italian’s first match since his sensational semifinal run at the French Open earlier this month.
Marco Cecchinato has won 32 matches so far in 2018 with 31 of them coming on clay (31/13). He has played only one match on grass in his entire career, which ended in a straight-set defeat against Kei Nishikori in Wimbledon last year, 2-6 2-6 0-6.
Nevertheless, the world #31 Marco Cecchinato is enjoying his career-best season in 2018, having won his maiden tour title at Budapest and posted his career-best grand slam result at the recently concluded French Open (SF). Additionally, he won the title at Santiago Challenger and made the semifinal at Alicante Challenger and Marbella Challenger.
Denis Istomin continued his decent form in the grass season with a three-set win over Andreas Seppi in the first round of ATP Eastbourne, 6-3 6-7 7-6. He has played three grass tournaments this month and managed to win at least one match in all three tournaments, at Stuttgart (R16), Halle (QR2) and Eastbourne (R16*).
This is a massive improvement considering he finished the clay season with an eight-match losing run on tour. His two wins over Philipp Kohlschreiber and Florian Mayer at Stuttgart two weeks back was only the first time he had managed to win back-to-back matches in a tournament since his quarterfinal run at Brisbane (first week of January).
The former world #33 Istomin has played four round of 16 matches here in the past and ended up winning all four, with the recent such win coming against a clay court specialist who plays one-handed backhand, Guillermo Garcia Lopez, in 2014.
These two players have never met before. Though Marco Cecchinato has won 21 matches more than Denis Istomin so far in 2018, the Uzbek is by far the better player on grass and will head into this clash as the big favorite.

Tennis Prediction: Marco Cecchinato
Odds: 4.00