Shintaro Imai and Taisei Ichikawa will play each other in the 1st round of the Playford Challenger for the 3rd time in their career. They are scheduled to compete on Tuesday at 12:30 pm on COURT 1. In this post, we analyze their head to head performance and prediction.
Prediction, odds and live streaming
The pick for Tennis Tonic is Shintaro Imai who should win in 3 sets.
Shintaro Imai -> 1.49
Taisei Ichikawa -> 2.48
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Prediction and head to head Shintaro Imai vs. Taisei Ichikawa
This will be the 3rd time that Shintaro Imai and Taisei Ichikawa clash against each other. The head to head is 2-0 for Imai (see full H2H stats), 2-0 on hard.
The last time that they played, Imai won 7-6(6) 4-6 6-2 in the 1st round in M25 Kashiwa back in 2022.
Shintaro Imai
27 - 14win/loss
406
290
| Year | Total | Hard | Clay | I.hard | Grass | Carpet |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 30-19 | 22-15 | 0-0 | 5-2 | 3-2 | 0-0 |
| 2023 | 5-4 | 5-4 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 |
| 2022 | 30-14 | 29-13 | 0-0 | 1-1 | 0-0 | 0-0 |
| 2021 | 21-19 | 13-18 | 0-0 | 8-1 | 0-0 | 0-0 |
| 2020 | 3-3 | 1-1 | 0-0 | 2-2 | 0-0 | 0-0 |
Ranked no. 433, the Japanese will start his run in the Playford Challenger after he played his last match in M25 Sapporo where he lost 2-6 6-2 6-3 to Kumasaka in the quarter on the 13th of September.
Shintaro has an aggregate 27-14 win-loss record in 2024, 19-11 on hard (See FULL STATS).
The Japanese’s best result of the year was reaching the final in M15 Hong Kong and M15 Tokyo.
Talking about his overall career, Imai has an overall 287-162 record. He has a positive 249-142 record on hard.
Previously in the Playford Challenger
The Japanese has never competed in this tournament before.
Taisei Ichikawa
| Year | Total | Hard | Clay | I.hard | Grass | Carpet |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 19-16 | 17-13 | 0-0 | 2-3 | 0-0 | 0-0 |
| 2023 | 35-25 | 29-19 | 6-5 | 0-1 | 0-0 | 0-0 |
| 2022 | 16-18 | 12-15 | 4-2 | 0-1 | 0-0 | 0-0 |
| 2021 | 11-19 | 8-16 | 3-3 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 |
| 2020 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 |
Ranked no. 696, Ichikawa got to the 1st round after beating Hugh Winter 6-4 6-0 and Jesse Delaney 7-6(4) 6-1.
In the qualifications, Taisei had a good straight sets win against Delaney (7-64 6-1). During the match Ichikawa scored 75 points vs Delaney’s 54. The Japanese was pretty aggressive to blast 30 winners.
Talking about serving, Ichikawa scored just 1 ace during the entire match and he committed only 1 double fault for the entire match. Taisei Ichikawa lost the serve once and he saved 6 break points. Furthermore, Ichikawa put 72% of his first serves in, winning 64% (30/47) of the points behind his 1st serve and 83% (15/18) on the 2nd serve. Ichikawa broke Delaney 4 times after converting 40% of his break points (4/10).
Overall Performance in this tournament
The Japanese started his run at this tournament from the qualifications. In the main draw, he hasn’t lost yet a set in this event to win 59% of the points he played.
Taisei’s best result of the year was reaching the final in M25 Nakhon Si Thammarat.
Ichikawa has a composed 18-13 win-loss record in 2024, 16-11 on hard (See FULL STATS).
Tennis Scores in Playford Challenger
- Dane SweenySweeny – Blake EllisEllis (6-2 7-5) – Stats, scores, rankings
- Tristan SchoolkateSchoolkate – Jake DelaneyDelaney (6-4 6-3) – Stats, scores, rankings
- Moerani BouzigeBouzige – Jacob BradshawBradshaw (4-6 7-5 6-3) – Stats, scores, rankings
- Shintaro MochizukiMochizuki – Aleksandre BakshiBakshi (7-5 6-3) – Stats, scores, rankings
Upcoming matches in the draw
- Li TuTu – Saba PurtseladzePurtseladze (0-0) – H2H and prediction
- Blake MottMott – Yuta ShimizuShimizu (0-0) – H2H and prediction
- Marc PolmansPolmans – Zura TkemaladzeTkemaladze (0-0) – H2H and prediction
- Christian LangmoLangmo – (0-0) – H2H and prediction
- Masamichi ImamuraImamura – Colin SinclairSinclair (0-1) – H2H and prediction
- Hikaru ShiraishiShiraishi – Thanasi KokkinakisKokkinakis (0-0) – H2H and prediction
- Rinky HijikataHijikata – Emile HuddHudd (0-0) – H2H and prediction
- Takuya KumasakaKumasaka – Omar JasikaJasika (0-0) – H2H and prediction
- Taisei IchikawaIchikawa – Shintaro ImaiImai (0-2) – H2H and prediction
- Tristan SchoolkateSchoolkate – Moerani BouzigeBouzige (1-0) – H2H and prediction
- Ryuki MatsudaMatsuda – Ajeet RaiRai (0-0) – H2H and prediction