Pablo Cuevas was a winner on the handicap for us on Thursday in Buenos Aires in a straight sets win over Joao Sousa, while anyone who took a chance on Albert Ramos as underdog would also have ben rewarded, as he eventually overcame David Ferrer.
On the outright front, Sam Querrey is now in a strong position in the bottom half of the draw in New York, but I won’t be counting any chickens just yet with Querrey.
It’s quarter finals day in week seven of the tour on Friday and one bet I fancy is in Rotterdam’s evening session.
Stanislas Wawrinka vs Denis Shapovalov
Both of these exciting shot makers look to be hitting the ball very well on the evidence of their last matches in Rotterdam this week and I’m happy to side with Wawrinka to come out on top on Friday.
The Swiss has taken his time to find his better level after injury, but he’s not too far away from his best tennis at the moment and assuming he’s physically fit he should be too strong for Shapovalov.
It was actually Shapovalov who beat his idol in their only career clash thus far in Tokyo towards the end of last season, but Wawrinka was struggling back then and I expect him to be a different proposition this time.
It’s difficult to find any stats that show Stan’s current level, as simply looking at his last 10 matches at main level (5-5 win/loss and 100.0 hold/break) doesn’t tell the whole story because he’s faced a lot of big servers in those matches (Raonic twice, Gulbis, Jarry, Khachanov, and Copil).
We can see though that if we compare the last 12 months of each man versus the current top-25 in the world rankings that Shapovalov has struggled, winning only seven of his 20 matches and holding serve just 75.9% of the time, while breaking 15.8% of the time (91.7 total).
Wawrinka has gone 7-6 win/loss, 87.5% holds and 13.1% breaks (100.6 total) and in his eight career matches in Rotterdam he’s 7-1 win/loss and 107.8 hold/break total.
It’s a fair statement to make that Wawrinka is playing top-25 tennis at the moment and on his current level he’ll probably have too much for the young Canadian, for whom consistency and the return of serve are still substantial issues in his game.
There’s also a sizeable question mark over Shapo’s big match temperament, with defeats in all four of his main level semi finals (0-8 in sets) and three of his last four quarter finals.
Gael Monfils dismantled Damir Dzumhur at the Australian Open a month ago to the point where Dzumhur won only 41% on first serve and 37% on second serve and while conditions there were quicker than Rotterdam it looks a tough match-up for the Bosnian.
Monfils has the talent to play in a variety of ways to not give Dzumhur the pace he likes and to force Dzumhur to make his own, which often results in errors.
Against Mikhail Kukushkin he pretty much always had the same flat ball coming at him to redirect and Kuku couldn’t hit through him on this slowish surface, but Monfils has much more variety and that should be key here.
The slow conditions in Rotterdam don’t really favour either Daniil Medvedev or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and I pretty much agree with the pricing of that match, slightly favouring the better defence and return game of Medvedev.
Kei Nishikori should have too much game for Marton Fucsovics in the other quarter final, while over in Buenos Aires the underdogs of interest are Albert Ramos again and Pablo Cuevas.
If we look at the all-time head-to-head between Cuevas and Dominic Thiem we find that both players have held serve 86.4% of the time, but Thiem has been 12% stronger on first serve points won and he’s created far more break chances: 0.8 per game compared to 0.30 per game.
So Cuevas has saved 83% of the break chances created by Thiem, but with Thiem a little rusty after his lay off and presumably lacking a bit of confidence after only two wins in his last five matches.
It’s fair to assume that Thiem may well just be lacking that match sharpness on the big points, while Cuevas has come back to form and played six matches on clay already this season, so he’s perhaps a little more attuned to this surface right now.
Either Cuevas +3.5 games or over 21.5 games or tie break played look the wagers of interest here.
Ramos may be a bit tired after a real grind against Ferrer on Thursday, but that’s the only factor putting me off siding with him against Diego Schwartzman, who hasn’t played well this clay swing so far and was a little lucky again yesterday.
Aljaz Bedene was right in their match until he started struggling with blisters and unless Ramos is jaded by the Ferrer match this looks closer than the odds suggest on current form.
Best Bets
1 point win Wawrinka to beat Shapovalov at 1.71
0.5 points win Cuevas +3.5 games at 2.02
