Max Basing #248United Kingdom00 – 2Mili Poljicak #264Croatia2

Basing, the world No. 241, is 9-5 across 14 tracked hard-court matches from 30 July to 16 September 2026.

Fast starts underpin that record: he averages 5.07 games to 3.86 in the first set, with 8.93 games played, and only four first sets got away from him. The counterweight is how often these matches stay close — six of the 14 included a tiebreak and his average match ran 20.9 games over 2.29 sets, with 7 straight-set wins against 3 straight-set losses. One retired match is excluded, so these figures cover completed matches only.

Poljicak, the world No. 291, has 15 matches tracked through 7 September 2026.

The serve is the strongest part of that profile — 480 of 637 first-serve points won — and gives him a route to hold against a returner like Basing. The rest is harder work: he converts only 30.1% of break points and wins 49.5% of total points, with an average match of 117.2 minutes. Whether that serve travels to an indoor hard court is the open question, since the available record holds no hard-court matches for him in this window.

The Eupago Porto Open is a Challenger 125, the highest tier below the ATP Tour, so ranking points and prize money carry more than at the 75-level events both men have mostly contested this season. Its headline entry is Grigor Dimitrov, a former world No. 3, and the field includes five top-100 players, which makes this an unusually deep draw for the level. For Basing and Poljicak that means a first-round opponent pool with little margin, and a win here is worth more to their ranking position than a comparable result at a lower-tier Challenger.