2010 Casablanca finalist Victor Hanescu opens his campaign against Spain's Daniel Gimeno-Traver.
Like many players in the draw, Hanescu has struggled to get the ball rolling in 2011 but things are looking brighter for the Romanian who always enjoys his best spells of the year on the spring clay court circuit. He had a fine run to the final in Casablanca last year, taking out Richard Gasquet among others.
He will rate his chances of going deep again this year as the seed in his quarter is Marcos Baghdatis, the out of form Cypriot who is rarely noted for his clay-court prowess.
Gimeno-Traver stormed into the top 100 last summer with a series of successes in challengers and ATPs but he has done little since. He's currently on an 11 match losing streak going back to October and looks set to plummet in the rankings fairly soon.
Hanescu is 1-1 on head-to-heads with the Spaniard but he has the confidence of having scored a win over him in Bueno Aires earlier this year, 6-3, 7-6.
Prediction: Hanescu in two
