We had to wait a long time for something to go our our way on Tuesday, but eventually it did when our 3.15 chance of Christopher Eubanks taking the opening set over Steve Johnson edged home.
He did it the hard way and we had a trademark Johnson double fault on set point to thank for it in the tie break, but after some poor luck earlier in the day that was most welcome.
Bernabe Zapata Miralles had earlier won set two instead of set one in Bastad against Federico Delbonis, while on the outright front, 150-1 chance Henri Laaksonen was favourite to beat Nicolas Jarry after leading 4-2 in their opening set, but he didn’t really recover from a poor service game lost after that and went down in two tight sets.
Juan Ignacio Londero had few problems easing through though and will face Hugo Dellien next, as expected, for a quarter final place, but we lost another tight outright one when Alex Bolt was edged out in a final set tie break in Newport by Alexander Bublik’s aces.
Swedish Open
There are four round two clashes on the card in Bastad on Wednesday and you’d have to give all four underdogs a fair chance – and there have been surprisingly few underdog winners so far in Bastad (only three).
Jeremy Chardy certainly has a fine record against Cristian Garin, as I mentioned in my outright preview, but that has to be tempered slightly by the fact that his three wins were before Garin established himself in the top-100.
Indeed, Chardy should have won the one clash that did take place on clay this season as well, but blew five match points in a trademark meltdown, and he did well on Tuesday to handle the strong wind in Bastad and edge out the struggling Pablo Carreno Busta.
Garin has been playing Bundesliga lately on the clay to prepare for this mini-clay swing, but an opener against Chardy is tough and the Frenchman will appreciate that the wind is set to drop quite a bit to an average speed of around 12kph for the morning matches.
It’ll get up to around 20kph by 15:00 local time and it’ll be interesting to see how Damir Dzumhur and Roberto Carballes Baena handle it, as they’re set to clash for the first time in their careers at around that time.
And while on the stats the layers probably have to make RCB favourite on their respective clay court numbers from the last 12 months I’m happy to risk Dzumhur as underdog here.
The Bosnian has struggled badly with fitness all season, but looked back to something a lot more reminiscent of his old form in a nice straight sets win over Casper Ruud on Tuesday.
None of the bad temperedness that has been a feature of Dzumhur’s play in recent times was on display and that has to be a sign that he’s happy with his fitness again I’d have thought.
The slow conditions here will suit Dzumhur nicely and although I expect it to be a real grind a fit and in form Dzumhur is a fair bet as underdog against the rather limited Carballes Baena.
Albert Ramos can’t be discounted either against Fernando Verdasco, but I do favour Verdasco in this match-up.
Verdasco has won five of their seven career clashes (including two wins from three here in Bastad) and Ramos has struggled to win points on his second serve against the more powerful Verdasco.
Ramos has won only 38.9% of his second serve points on clay against Verdasco, whose career record in Bastad is excellent (20-10 win/loss and a hold/break total of 111.1).
Ramos was helped out rather a lot by a weak display from Constant Lestienne on Tuesday and I’d suggest that Ramos’ confidence isn’t where it needs to be right now to take down Verdasco.
Before that there’s a classic clash of styles between the hard hitting aggression of Nicolas Jarry and the more measured game of Mikael Ymer and the home hope isn’t without a decent chance.
In his seven career matches at min level now on clay he’s broken serve 30% of the time and held his won deal 72.1% of the time and in these slow conditions, Jarry will have to hit his spots if he wants to progress.
Croatia Open
I’m not sure that I fancy any of the underdogs in Umag today, with all four favourites likely to progress.
But there is one bet I like here and that’s to take a chance on either a long opening set or a tie break in the match between Jiri Vesely and Leonardo Mayer.
Both of these guys have powerful serves and they’ve played 0.27 tie breaks per set against each other on clay, with the opening set going to a tie break in their last four meetings (three on clay and one on grass).
And given that Mayer has won all four of them and leads the head-to-head 6-1 on all surfaces (4-1 on clay) the price I’ve seen of 9-1 about Mayer winning the opener 7-6 looks tasty.
Mayer isn’t the best returner by any means and against lefties on clay at main level he’s played 0.24 tie breaks per set and broken serve only 19% of the time.
He creates only half a chance per service game and takes only 36% of those chances, so he breaks on average once every six service games. He also famously struggles to serve out sets, so I’m happy to take a long opening set here.
Against Pablo Andujar yesterday he was well on top and still almost went to a breaker and 2-1 about over 10.5 games in set one looks the bet.
Fabio Fognini lost to Stefano Travaglia as a 1.18 chance at the US Open two years ago, but his record in Umag is solid, with seven wins from his last nine and the two he didn’t win were final set tie break defeats.
He’s made at least the semis here five times and I’m not really of a mind to take him on with Travaglia today, although it’s perfectly possible of course that Fogna might have one of his off days.
Attila Balazs played a long one yesterday and had a (highly questionable) MTO in the final set breaker and I wouldn’t fancy him much even when fit to beat Filip Krajinovic, while Laslo Djere should be much too strong for Paulo Lorenzi.
Hall of Fame Open
Unlike in Umag, several underdogs appeal here, with the ones that rank highest on my list of potential upsets being: Alexander Bublik, Ramkumar Ramanathan, Marcel Granollers and Matt Ebden.
Bublik is hard to predict and he scraped past my man Alex Bolt last night in a final set tie break, but Viktor Troicki is living off past glories these days and his forehand is all over the place.
You take your chances with the eccentric Bublik, but he’s serving very well and I’d struggle to back Troicki at odds-on against anyone decent.
Ramanathan loves it here and his price of around the 2.65 mark looks the bet of the day in Newport against Humbert, whose couple of wins at Wimbledon in markedly different conditions seems to have made him very short here.
In any case, one of those wins was a retirement, another an awful performance from Felix Auger-Aliassime and a not much better one from Marcel Granollers.
The Frenchman has never played Newport before and we’ll see how he copes with the unique conditions here versus a man who’s won seven of his eight career matches in Newport.
He’s already taken down Yuichi Sugita and Sergiy Stakhovsky this week and of course he lost in the final set of the title match here a year ago, so his form at this venue could barely be better.
The concern with Ramanathan is his record against lefties, which isn’t the best at main level (1-5 win/loss) or at all levels (16-25) but at this price I’ll take him to beat Humbert, who has only played 11 grass matches in his life.
Ebden has won four of his five career matches against Denis Kudla and wouldn’t it be ironic if both he and Mischa Zverev – two very good grass court exponents – came back to form from nowhere the same week?
Zverev has already dumped my outright Tim Smyczek out and both Zverev and Ebden have pretty much perfect conditions for their games – they’ve just both been so poor it was very hard to fancy them this week.
Granollers is also a tough one to predict, with peaks and troughs of form throughout his career, but on his showing in the last round and semi final run here a year ago he’s every chance of taking down Jordan Thompson.
I’m yet to be convinced that this Newport grass suits the game of Thompson, who’s lost two of his three here and after he moaned his way to the latter stages in Antalya complaining about bad bounces, he’ll get more of the same here.
So, loads of options today in Newport and I’ll chance Ramanathan as my bet there.
Best Bets
0.5 points win Dzumhur to beat Carballes Baena at 2.23
0.5 points win over 10.5 games in set one of Vesely/Mayer at 3.0
0.5 points win Ramanathan to beat Humbert at 2.65
