We were a little unlucky with the big overs bet on Saturday in Tokyo, as Reilly Opelka had his chances to take it into a deciding set when he had set point at 5-5 in set two and led *4-3 in the ensuing tie break.
Ultimately, Opelka didn’t serve well enough on the day and without that weapon firing at full tilt or finding the right spots in the service box John Millman’s life was made a whole lot easier.
So, we have finals to look at in Tokyo and Beijing and the start of round one at the Shanghai Masters, which will be the main point of interest to me on Sunday.
Historically, the Shanghai Masters has produced a pretty average frequency of underdog winners, with 28% of them winning in the last seven years, and 42% of its matches have produced at least one tie break.
Conditions are forecast to be okay for Sunday’s play in Shanghai, with 25C heat in the shade and around 50% humidity, plus an average wind speed of around 13kph.
They start at 12:00 local time (05:00 UK) with our man Nikoloz Basilashvili taking on Radu Albot and this one is mainly on the racquet of the big-hitting Georgian.
The 3-0 head-to-head is from a long time ago and this one will come down to how many errors Basil makes on the day: if it’s not that many he should win, with conditions likely to be a bit fast for Albot if Basil hits his spots.
I was toying with the idea of backing Joao Sousa as slight underdog against Filip Krajinovic, with Sousa having been in good form lately on the hard courts, but again it may just be too quick for Sousa here.
He’s lost five of his six career matches in Shanghai (0-4 in the main draw) and while Krajinovic has done nothing here either yet (1-2 win/loss) the price would need to be a bit bigger for me to press the button on Sousa.
Fernando Verdasco is another one for whom conditions in Shanghai have proven to be not exactly to his liking, with Nando holding a 4-8 record at this tournament (and three of his four wins have come against lower ranked Asian opponents).
But his opponent on Sunday, Taylor Fritz, may well be paying the price just now for a busy season in 2019 and he was last seen losing to Reilly Opelka rather tamely in Tokyo and struggling with what appeared to be a left knee problem.
So, it’s the last match of the day in Shanghai that is perhaps of more interest, with the suddenly out of form Hubert Hurkacz taking on the in-form Chinese player Zhizhen Zhang.
I’m not sure what’s happened to Hurkacz since winning Winston-Salem towards the end of August, as he hasn’t won a match since, despite being favourite in two of his three defeats (eh also lost in straights to Tsitsipas in Davis Cup) post-Winston-Salem.
He lost to Jeremy Chardy from 2-1 up in New York and then didn’t come close to winning a set against either Gregoire Barrere in Metz or Lucas Pouille in Tokyo.
Maybe fatigue or perhaps carrying an injury has contributed to his post-title malaise, I’m not sure, but on current form he may well face a match from Zhang on Sunday.
Zhang is playing well right now, having won the Jinan Challenger in the first week of September, followed up by a tight loss 7-6, 6-7, 7-5 to Soon-Woo Kwon in Davis Cup and a match he lost from 6-2 up in the final set tie break against Andreas Seppi in Zhuhai.
That Seppi loss came after Zhang had beaten Dominik Koepfer in straight sets in Zhuhai and Zhang followed that up by beating Kyle Edmund in Beijing before losing 6-3, 6-3 to top seed Dominic Thiem in Beijing.
So, he’s shown he can play at this level – or at least at this level at home in China – and 1.35 about Hurkacz shaking off his current min-slump and beating Zhang comfortably looks like a bet I wouldn’t want to take on.
Instead, the 1.80 on Zhang +1.5 sets looks the wager for Sunday.
Briefly on the finals on Sunday, fatigue may be a bit of a problem for Stefanos Tsitsipas, who only finished his semi final at gone midnight local time on Sunday morning.
He’s slight favourite against Dominic Thiem in the China Open final, which will take place at (not before) 19:30 local time (12:30 UK) when it’ll be 14C.
This pair clashed five times last season, with Thiem winning three of them (two on outdoor hard and one on clay) and Tsitsipas two (one on clay, one on hard) and really Thiem was a little lucky to escape his semi final against Karen Khachanov.
The Russian blinked from a set and 5-3 up (and a break up in the final set), but Thiem has been scrapping this week and the slow conditions at night have helped him.
I may have risked Tsitsipas here, but that late night puts me off.
In Tokyo, Novak Djokovic is the joint-shortest price he’s ever been at 1.04 in a main level final when he takes on John Millman.
Not since Djokovic won the Serbia Open in 2009 (versus Kubot) and 2011 (against Lopez) has he been this short to win a title match and he actually was taken to a tie break in both of those Belgrade finals.
It’s a good match-up for the Serb, with Millman lacking any weapons that should worry Djokovic and it’s be a pretty big shock if Millman were to win it or even take a set.
Best Bet
0.5 points win Zhang +1.5 sets to beat Hurkacz
