It was another rough day for underdog backers in Shanghai on Thursday, with seven of eight favourites winning, which made it the worst round three return in Shanghai since the tournament began.
And it’s no coincidence that after the worst round two and round three in Shanghai’s history (in terms of underdog winners) that we’ve had a bad couple of days, too, with two of our three outrights falling on Thursday.
I said yesterday that it would be sadly ironic if our outright of last week, Fabio Fognini, were able to defeat the same opponent he lost to from a set up in Beijing (Karen Khachanov) in much quicker conditions in Shanghai – and of course, he did.
And he did it by moving Khachanov around and testing the bigger man’s movement, which is what he started doing, but couldn’t finish it off, in Beijing.
It helped that Khachanov only made 51% of his first serves on Thursday (63% in Beijing), but Fognini didn’t serve well on either occasion (48% in both matches) yet Fogna was still able to be the one dictating play.
Question now for Fabio is can he do it against Daniil Medvedev, against whom he was leading comfortably in their last encounter (in Sydney at the start of 2018) and all of a sudden went away. Sound familiar?
It will be to seasoned Fognini watchers, but the Italian’s price of 4.35 is certainly tempting enough, given that Fog was a 1.89 favourite when they met on that lively hard court in Sydney only 22 months ago.
Granted, Medvedev has improved since then and is now top-five in the world, but he won only 30% of his second serve points against Vasek Pospisil on Thursday and should certainly have been a set down to the Canadian, who led the opener 5-2.
It’s very tempting indeed to take Fognini here to win a set at 2.12, but I prefer taking a chance at a bigger price on another Italian, our remaining outright Matteo Berrettini.
I’m still not convinced about Dominic Thiem in these conditions and while the timing of Thiem versus Berrettini at around 8:30 at night local time isn’t ideal for Berrettini it might be that this one will be played under the roof.
The forecast says to expect rain in the morning and potentially the evening on Friday in Shanghai and Berrettini has already played very well under the roof this week (against Struff in round one).
Roof or no roof, Berrettini has played about as well as I could have hoped so far and held serve 93% of the time against Struff, Garin and Bautista Agut, winning 83% of his first serve points, hitting over one ace per game and also breaking serve nearly 40% of the time.
If he keeps this current level up he should be too strong for Thiem, who admitted everything we know about the Austrian on a quick hard court after the Basilashvili match.
“Honestly, for me, it's difficult to play against guys like him [Basilashvili] because I love to have the control over the game, love to be in offence myself,” Thiem admitted. “But against him, it's almost impossible because he hits full power from the first shot on, serve or return.”
That’s the theory that I went with on Thursday and Basil didn’t play well enough to see it come to fruition, but it looks likely to be a similar story again for Thiem on Friday.
Adding to Thiem’s issues is the possibility of fatigue, with Thiem looking very tired at the end of the Basilashvili match and he looks set to have to do a lot of defending against Berrettini, assuming the Italian continues to play as well as he has thus far.
At the prices, Berrettini looks the best of the underdogs on Friday and hopefully he can buck the trend of only four of the last 28 betting underdogs winning in the quarter final stage of the Shanghai Masters.
Stefanos Tsitsipas doesn’t seem likely to be upsetting Novak Djokovic on current form, hence the short-looking price of 1.17 about Djokovic here (he was 1.39 on clay and 1.25 on hard the last two times they met).
Djokovic has been excellent so far this Asian swing, posting stellar numbers in his seven matches: 97% holds of serve and 34% breaks for an amazing total of 131.
Tsitsipas meanwhile in his eight matches in Asia can only command a rather average total of 103 and while the numbers don’t tell the whole story it does back up the respective level of the two players currently and a surprise doesn’t seem that likely in this one.
Alexander Zverev took out our 150-1 outright Andrey Rublev on Thursday in what was a poor serving day from Rublev, who didn’t break 40% of first serves in for some time and ran into an early storm from Zverev.
The German still tried his best to mess it up from 6-0, 3-0 and I’m not sure that his confidence is back at a high enough level to be upsetting Roger Federer just yet, but Fed wasn’t fabulous on Thursday himself.
The Swiss veteran had to rely on a trademark David Goffin choke (five set points missed on his own serve) in the opening set of their encounter and Fed hit 40 unforced errors in what was a very competitive affair, so while I wouldn’t count Zverev out of this one, I prefer Berrettini’s chances at a similar price.
Zverev’s first serve has been firing lately, with over one ace per game and 87% holds this Asian swing so far to go with 31.1% breaks of serve, so the numbers confirm that he’s coming back to the sort of form that made him a very dangerous opponent to all.
He’s beaten Fed four times in nine clashes at all levels and from an outright perspective it would be a result for us if Zverev did win this (and of course Berrettini beating Thiem) but we’ll have to wait and see if his deep-seated belief in the key moments against an elite opponent is back yet.
Best Bet
1 point win Berrettini to beat Thiem at 2.55
