Underdog backers took a heck of a beating on Tuesday on the clay when favourites went 16-1 in Hamburg and Gstaad and the one underdog that did win was just a shade over evens.
Indeed, in all matches on Tuesday favourites went 23-3 on the day, with two pretty unlikely underdogs winning – Bernard Tomic in a final set tie break and Kevin King after another dire (and possibly shoulder-affected) showing from Grigor Dimitrov.
Our man Tennys Sandgren had his chances, but failed to take more than two of his 10 break opportunities and failed to stave off any of the three he faced himself and blew a 3-1 lead in set two against Radu Albot.
It’s set to be another warm day in Atlanta on Wednesday, but not insanely hot and humid at 28C and 40% humidity, which by Atlanta summer standards isn’t that bad.
Our big priced outright in Atlanta, Alexei Popyrin, goes for us today as roughly an even money shot against French net rusher Pierre-Hugues Herbert and this is certainly a winnable match for Popyrin.
Lately, under the tutelage of Pat Cash, Popyrin has been much more willing to get to the net to finish off points and his biggish serve and forehand are ably assisted by a decent backhand that he can slice or hit double handed.
Herbert beat Popyrin back in 2017 at Challenger level when Popyrin was ranked 1151, so that’s not too relevant, but Popyrin has beaten net rushing types Mahut and Ebden since the start of 2018.
Popyrin is certainly one (slight) underdog option in Atlanta on Wednesday, but we already have him outright and on a day where all four matches could go either way instead I’ll chance Soon-Woo Kwon.
Kwon has been in fine form lately, with a very nice showing at Wimbledon, where he gave Karen Khachanov all he could handle in a very tight four set loss and he ripped through qualies here in Atlanta as well.
Kwon crushed Peter Gojowczyk and Ilya Ivashka in straight sets, breaking the pair 10 times in total, and he could have beaten Prajnesh Gunneswaran much easier than he eventually did on Tuesday.
The Korean failed with all of his first 11 break chances against Gunneswaran, but once he got the breakthrough in set two he dished out a bagel to the Indian in the decider.
It was still a long match though (2.5 hours) and I’m going to have to hope that due to his qualie matches being fast affairs (less than an hour to beat Gojowczyk) he’ll have enough for today.
He faces Cameron Norrie, who just about came out on top against a poor Jordan Thompson in round one, but looked pretty shaky in doing so, as he tends to look when he’s lacking confidence.
It’s easy to see why Norrie is lacking belief at the moment, with only three wins in his last nine matches, and if we’re going purely on the respective confidence of the two players Kwon seems way ahead in that department.
Having played a leftie yesterday will surely help Kwon in this one and there was very little (other than a willingness to fight) that impressed about Norrie against Thompson: 41% second serve points won and nine double faults.
Indeed, his last four matches have seen the Brit win 41%, 30%, 47%, and 41% on his second ball and Norrie, in his seven matches at main level, when priced up between 1.80 and 1.99 has won only one in straight sets (four deciding set wins and two losses).
I wouldn’t be surprised if this goes long again, but I’ll chance Kwon here as slight underdog.
Dan Evans was impressive on Tuesday and should have beaten Radu Albot to land the Delray Beach title, but failed with three match points, and then defeated Albot pretty comfortably on grass at Eastbourne.
Evans should have plenty left in the tank after just 58 minutes against Jason Jung yesterday (and an earlier match time) so there should be no reason why he’d fail on energy levels in this battle of movement and craft.
Finally, two guys that have played 0.80 tie breaks per set against each other in their career series go head-to-head and they, of course, are John Isner and Reilly Opelka.
Our 20-1 outright Opelka started pretty well against Alexander Bublik on Tuesday and both men have described this match as “a coin flip.”
Isner has held serve 94.4% of the time in Atlanta, but played only 0.32 tie breaks per set here, so the 2.25 about over 1.5 tie breaks is perhaps a bit short for my liking at a tournament which doesn’t produced many breakers per match on average.
Opelka has actually won six of their eight tie breaks (and two of their three meetings) and having had that match under his belt and with Isner coming straight from low bouncing grass and not looking in great touch (despite the title) I’m happy with Opelka here.
Best Bet
0.5 points win Kwon to beat Norrie at 2.0
