The tennis betting gods weren’t quite on our side on Saturday at the Miami Open, as while we found a nice odds-against winner with the headline tip of Leonardo Mayer, I didn’t get the reward for opting to side with Jordan Thompson.
Had I gone for the handicap on Thompson against Karen Khachanov it would have been a simple winner, but I went for the overs and Thompson won in a comfortable straight sets.
Then Feli Lopez produced a downright awful display to fail to get anywhere close to taking a set from Grigor Dimitrov, who hadn’t played since January.
Moving on to Sunday and we have eight matches from round three on the card and the bet I like first is to take on a big-serving favourite in these slow conditions.
Milos Raonic vs Kyle Edmund
I’m quite happy to take Raonic on as favourite here against Edmund in what will be the Canadian’s opening match of the tournament, due to Raonic receiving a walkover in round two.
Max Marterer pulled out of their slated encounter and that may well not work in Raonic’s favour in the sense that his opening match of the event is tough, with Edmund playing well at the moment.
Raonic somehow made the latter stages of Indian Wells last week, despite some very ordinary tennis indeed (and that’s being kind), but once he faced a decent level of opposition in the form of Dominic Thiem the Canadian was unable to make anything happen on return.
He didn’t create a single break point until the 35th game of the match and only then when Thiem got tight serving it out and he had no real answer to the heavy hitting of Marcos Giron a couple of rounds before that (until Giron got tight 4-1 up in the third).
And if we look at his recent record versus the current top-25 it’s revealing: Raonic is 6-9 win/loss in the past year and has broken serve only 10.1% of the time, highlighting his weakness still in that area of his game.
Edmund has broken the top-25 17.4% of the time in the past year at main level, but it’s the slow conditions that lead me to side with Edmund here, with the Brit enjoying that extra moment he gets on the slower surfaces to unleash his heavy groundies.
Edmund has a patchy record against big servers, but he’s beaten the trio of John Isner, Kevin Anderson and Steve Johnson at Grand Slam level, so he’s more than capable of taking down Raonic.
The Brit looked in good nick in his opening match and has a good recent record as betting underdog, winning six of his last 10 and losing three of the other four in a final set.
Fabio Fognini has been in poor form so far this season, but as I said in my outright preview he’ll improve at some point soon and why not against an opponent he’s beaten seven times from nine matches?
That opponent is Roberto Bautista-Agut and the odds of around 3.20 about Fognini for this one show how bad Fabio has been so far in 2019, but the Italian has beaten RBA as underdog three times in their last five meetings.
There isn’t much in it at all in their head-to-head stats, apart from Fognini taking a whopping 64% of his break point chances against RBA and it would be no surprise to me if the real Fabio turned up for this one. [Note: Fognini has since come in to around 2.60]
John Isner and Albert Ramos have clashed twice in the past – both times on clay in Rome – and played a huge 0.83 tie breaks per set.
Ramos also has a fair record against big servers: 17-17 win/loss against the ones in my database and 7-7 on outdoor hard, so in his current improved mood and in slow conditions the Spaniard isn’t without a chance of at least making this very close.
Ramos’ game for it to function properly requires a lot of discipline and I think that helps him to stay focused against these big servers and concentrate on his own game rather than getting annoyed when ace after ace flys past him.
One player who tends not to fare so well against the big servers is Dusan Lajovic, who faces one of our outright picks Nick Kyrgios on Sunday.
Kyrgios didn’t look exactly invested in proceedings against Alexander Bublik and offered little beyond his serve, but that will probably be enough against Lajovic, although it might be closer than their clash here last year.
Borna Coric was bagelled by Roberto Carballes Baena in his last match, which shows the current state of the Croat’s game and it wouldn’t be much of a surprise to see Jeremy Chardy beat him today.
Federico Delbonis has proven tough for even the very best (apart from Nadal) to shake off and if he finds his best game he could cover the handicap against Novak Djokovic, but I’ve been through enough with Delbonis the last two tournaments already to back him again today.
Young talents Feli Auger-Aliassime and Hubert Hurkacz are both showing their worth at the highest level right now and this one’s a bit of a pick’em, with perhaps slight value on the Canadian as underdog.
Finally, I’m hopeful of a win for our speculative outright hope Nikoloz Basilashvili over Robin Haase, with Q2 opening up very nicely, as hoped for and it would be disappointing for Basil to lose to Haase in these conditions.
Best Bet
1 point win Edmund to beat Raonic at 2.32
