Debrief
We didn’t get any joy last week in Vienna and Basel, with Marton Fucsovics retiring sick in round two and Marius Copil and Philipp Kohlschreiber failing to negotiate the opening round.
Things went more or less as I had expected in Basel, with Roger Federer and Stefanos Tsitsipas contesting one semi final and Alex De Minaur in the other semi, but Reilly Opelka getting there as well after he let us down in Stockholm was galling. Thankfully he didn't make the final, but he was only a tie break away against De MInaur.
Conditions and trends
We’re back in Paris-Bercy again for the final main calendar tournament of the season and it’s one that provided us with a nice 80-1 outright winner in Jack Sock a couple of years ago.
Karen Khachanov won it at 40-1 last year and two qualifiers have made the final in Paris in the last seven years (Krajinovic and Janowicz), which is very rare at a Masters 1000 event.
This is not your usual M1000 though, with plenty of tanks, half-baked efforts, injuries, fatigue, and apathy often on display at the AccorHotels Arena in Bercy.
Playing conditions here are at the whim of tournament director Guy Forget, who tweaks the speed as and when he feels like it, but what we do know is that it’s a GreenSet indoor surface laid on board and last year it was around 41 CPI in the later rounds.
Form doesn’t tend to matter much here, with Sock winning it having lost 7 of his previous 10 matches coming into Bercy (and he should have been beaten in round one by Kyle Edmund).
Top seeds don’t have a great record either, with Novak Djokovic in 2014 and 2015 being the only number one seed to take home the title since Andre Agassi in 1999.
Quarter one
This is an interesting quarter, with tournament favourite Novak Djokovic (a 2.50 chance) likely to have to beat the man who defeated him last time out in Shanghai, Stefanos Tsitsipas.
It’s very hard to see Djokovic losing to the winner of Dusan Lajovic and Richard Gasquet, but Diego Schwartzman in round two is no gimme, with Djokovic being tested by the Argentine on clay in their last two clashes.
As regular readers will know, I prefer Schwartzman on hard courts to clay in terms of his effectiveness and that could be a decent test for Djokovic early on, but Tsitsipas seems more likely to beat the Serb if anyone is in Q1.
Tsitsipas might have to go through Roberto Bautista Agut if he’s to make the last eight, but Alex De Minaur is in there as well and this mini-section looks to be between that trio or possibly Taylor Fritz.
Tsitsipas beat RBA in Melbourne and he’s won his last three against De Minaur, so it looks set to be another Tsitsipas versus Djokovic showdown in the quarter finals.
Djokovic hasn’t been beaten before the quarters in Bercy since Sam Querrey defeated him having lost the opening set 0-6 in 2012.
Quarter two
Daniil Medvedev is a warm order for this quarter of the draw and on recent form you’d have to make him favourite, but how much has he got left in the tank after a monumental effort this summer and autumn?
Pulling out of Moscow was probably a good idea for Medvedev, but he’s too short in price for me at 5.5 and instead I’ll take a chance on new dad John Isner in this one at a more palatable price of 60-1.
Isner became a dad for the second time earlier this week and while I’m not usually keen on backing a new dad, this is his second child, so it’s unlikely to hit him with the same force as the first.
That’s the theory anyway, but more relevant perhaps is Isner’s record in Paris, where he made the final in 2016 (lost to Murray in a deciding set), the semi finals in 2017 (lost in a final set tie break to Krajinovic) and to the eventual champ Karen Khachanov (Isner had two match points) last year.
That’s excellent form here and while he’s yet to face Medvedev the Russian hasn’t found it easy at all versus Reilly Opelka, winning both of his matches against Opelka in final set tie breaks.
David Goffin is another possible option in this quarter at 100-1, but he’s never won back-to-back matches in Bercy and may face his nemesis Grigor Dimitrov in his opening match (10-1 head-to-head to Dimitrov).
So, maybe Dimitrov is worth thinking about, but he’s never won three straight matches in Bercy and hasn’t shown anything all year other than at the US Open.
Dominic Thiem may have spent the last of his season’s energy in Vienna, while Milos Raonic is badly lacking matches after another terrible year with injuries.
Quarter three
Roger Federer’s likely non-appearance in 2017 led me to Jack Sock and maybe it’s worth taking a chance again that Federer either doesn’t show after Basel or turns up and puts in a below par display.
Either of those scenarios are perfectly possible and of course Fed has only made the final of the Paris Masters once in his entire career.
The man who beat him in Shanghai, Alexander Zverev is one obvious contender here, having won the World Tour Finals in similar conditions a year ago, but does he still have that sort of confidence after a poor year?
I wouldn’t rule it out, but I don’t much fancy it at 20-1, and one I was toying with in this quarter of the draw was Denis Shapovalov, who won the title in Stockholm a couple of weeks ago.
If he finds the sort of serving form that we saw in the final against Filip Krajinovic he’ll be tough to stop and he should beat Fabio Fognini (1-7 win/loss in Paris) if he can get past Gilles Simon first up (Simon only once past the last-16 in Paris).
He’s yet to take a set off Zverev in three meetings though and maybe this is a step too far for Shapovalov just yet.
Gael Monfils’ body is a mass of tape at the moment, as he admitted in Vienna, and it’s tough to see him winning in his current condition, so no bet in Q3 for me.
Quarter four
The standout price for me in Q4 is the 60-1 about Matteo Berrettini, who showed some fair form on indoor hard in Vienna, making the semis there, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that he could do what Khachanov did here a year ago.
He may well have to beat said Khachanov to do it, but on current form that doesn’t seem too much of a problem, with the defending champion still struggling, as he has been all season.
The return game needs to be at its best for Berrettini to stand a chance, but with doubts about the fitness and form of Rafael Nadal, who hasn’t played competitively since the US Open, I’ll take a chance on Berrettini at what looks a fair price.
Nadal, who got married 10 days ago, played one Laver Cup match since New York and withdrew from the Asian swing due to a wrist injury.
He played an exhibition against Djokovic a few days ago in Kazakhstan, but his record in Bercy isn’t great at the best of times, with his only final here coming way back in 2007 against David Nalbandian, who dished him up a bagel in a 6-4, 6-0 win for the Argentine.
The other options in Q4 if we’re opposing Khachanov and Nadal look to be Stan Wawrinka, Andrey Rublev, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Marin Cilic and Hubert Hurkacz.
Wawrinka is overlooked after pulling out of his quarter final in Basel with a back injury, while Cilic has been in awful form all season and Rublev may well be too tired after a busy couple of weeks and second half of the season in general.
Tsonga apparently has an announcement to make that’s “very important for me” any day now and maybe he’s decided to hang up his racquet after this week.
It might not be that, of course, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if the 34-year-old has decided to call it a day after an injury ravaged time lately and where better than the place where he won one of his two M1000 titles?
It’s hard to see Tsonga rolling back the years now and making another Bercy final this week and I’m happy to go with Berrettini here.
Conclusion
I’m going to assume that John Isner will show up for this week (his wife gave birth last Sunday, October 20, so you’d have thought he’d have withdrawn by now if he were going to) and he and Matteo Berrettini look the ones for value at the moment.
I’ll see what happens when qualies are complete, with the good record of qualifiers here lately in the back of my mind.
Best Bets
1 point each-way Isner at 61.0
1 point each-way Berrettini at 61.0
