The good results continued in Miami on Monday when both of my selections were winners, with Jordan Thompson easily covering the handicap in a win over Grigor Dimitrov and Marco Cecchinato just about covering against David Goffin.
Round four of the Miami Open is usually another sparse one for winning underdogs, with only 13% winners in the last three years and 24% this decade.
It’s set to be another warm day in Miami Gardens on Tuesday, with 30C heat and 50% humidity, but not a huge amount of wind is expected (around 15kph).
We have two outrights in action on Tuesday, with Nick Kyrgios being a1.50 chance to beat Borna Coric and Nikoloz Basilashvili a slight underdog against Felix Auger-Aliassime.
I’d have taken those scenarios at the start of the week and while you can never be anything like sure of which Kyrgios will turn up on the day, the stats suggest he has a very good chance of defeating Coric.
The slow conditions don’t help, but Kyrgios has held serve 91.2% of the time in his Miami career, and he beat Coric on clay when they met in slow conditions in Estoril.
But it’s Coric’s abysmal record against big servers that means I’m as confident as it’s possible to be in a player as unstable as Kyrgios that the Aussie should be progressing here.
Coric is 4-22 win/loss on all surfaces at main level against the big servers on my list, breaking serve only 9% of the time and holding 80.6% of the time against those players.
Coric showed against Ivo Karlovic at Indian Wells that he still is unable to implement a game plan to defuse the big servers and it may take a Kyrgios no-show for Coric to progress here.
As for Basil, well, he has a good record as slight underdog (won five of six at main level when priced up between 2.0 and 2.20) and in what will be a interesting and entertaining first-strike battle with FAA our man has every chance.
Kyle Edmund was one I had in mind to back against John Isner in this round, but now that Edmund has been made favourite I’m not quite so keen.
As I said before the Milos Raonic match, Edmund has a fair record against big servers, and while Raonic was yet again struggling with injury in the Edmund match the Brit looked pretty comfortable returning serve in these slow conditions.
The warmer conditions and a 12:00 local time start will help Isner, so I’ll pass on that one.
On what looks a tricky day for value seekers, I’m going to take a bit of a chance in my one bet on Tuesday.
Novak Djokovic vs Roberto Bautista Agut
Djokovic isn’t as reliable a favourite as you might think in best-of-three set matches at main level when priced up as a 1.20 to 1.30 favourite in recent times.
The Serb is only 9-7 win/loss in his last 16 such matches and five of his last six have gone past today’s total games mark of 20.5.
So far he hasn’t been anything like in top form in this Sunshine Double and I said in my preview the other day that I wouldn’t be surprised if Federico Delbonis gave him something to think about.
There’s certainly a lot of precedent to suggest that Djokovic will improve as the event goes on, but he’ll do well to brush aside the tenacious Spaniard in these slow conditions in Miami.
Indeed, RBA has proven a tricky customer for Djokovic lately, with RBA winning from a set down as recently as January this year in the Doha semi finals in similarly slow conditions on outdoor hard.
It will be far more humid this time than on that occasion and we’ve seen the Serb struggle in such conditions many times over the years, most recently at the Australian Open against Daniil Medvedev.
In any case, only once in their last five clashes has Djokovic won in straight sets, and RBA should fancy this, having recovered from health problems that put a stop to his very bright start to this season.
I expect this to be a decent test for Djokovic and either the over 20.5 games or +4.5 games on RBA look the bets here.
The other one that looks a possible option today is to take on Roger Federer, who will be playing in very slow conditions at 21:00 local time against Daniil Medvedev.
I don’t think that these conditions are suitable for either of these two players, but the defensive skills and fitness of the Russian on a slow court may well make this a tough test indeed for the Swiss veteran.
Jordan Thompson is 3-7 versus the big servers on my list (two wins coming over the fading Feli Lopez) and with Kevin Anderson looking in decent shape after his injury lay off I’m not really feeling an upset there.
Denis Shapovalov has won three of his four meetings with Stefanos Tsitsipas, so he’ll fancy his chances of causing a minor upset against the Greek, but Shapo is the only leftie so far (apart from Nadal) to have beaten Tsitsipas at main level.
Finally, while David Goffin improved his level on Monday he still looked extremely vulnerable on serve, even when winning comfortably, so I wouldn’t be backing him as a 1.62 favourite against the inconsistent, but dangerous, Frances Tiafoe.
It looks a day to be circumspect with our bets and I’ll take just the one on day seven.
Best Bets
1 point win Bautista-Agut +4.5 games to beat Djokovic at 1.95
