Day one of this year’s Australian Open may well be affected by the weather if the forecast is to be believed, with thunderstorms turning to rain predicted throughout the day.
If that’s correct we may not see much play on the outside courts on Monday, so it’s probably worth focusing on the courts with a roof: Rod Laver, Margaret Court and Melbourne Arena.
The knock-on effect of this – if the forecast is right – might be that players like Paire and Humbert, who would have had a quick turnaround from Auckland, may well now get more time to rest and prepare than they expected.
Another effect could be that by the time these matches do get played the conditions could be totally different than those we’re expecting on day one, due to the notoriously changeable Melbourne weather.
Before I take a look at the matches on Monday it’s worth mentioning some stats relating to this tournament and particularly the lack of underdog winners at this event.
It ranks the second-worst of all (behind only the French Open) for frequency of underdog winners at 22% (over the last 10 years), so it’s a tournament that I’ll be being very selective in with regards to the number of bets I make and the stakes.
Last year there were just seven underdog winners on day one and the biggest price of those was 2.88 about Opelka beating Isner. Most of the dog winners were only very slight underdogs.
In the last 10 years 48% of the matches here have featured at least one tie break, while in the last three years the service hold average here has been 79% (81% in last year’s main draw and 78% in this year’s qualifying rounds).
Qualifiers usually do okay here, with normally at least one making it through to round three or four and that’s perhaps due to them being nicely attuned to the unique conditions at this major via qualies.
And one of those qualifiers is a player that loves the big stage and seems to perform much better on it than he does grinding away in Challengers and that’s Dennis Novak.
The Austrian qualified nicely here, not dropping a set and holding serve 89% of the time and winning a very healthy 67% of the points on his second serve.
Novak showed again in the ATP Cup that he seems to go better when he’s facing the higher ranked players, when he beat Guido Pella and pushed Marin Cilic all the way.
In his six career slam matches Novak has only lost in straight sets once (and that was his very first one against Grigor Dimitrov, who was then ranked number three in the world) and has caused big problems for the likes of Milos Raonic (who was a 1.08 shot to beat Novak at Wimbledon), Paire and Marton Fucsovics, as well as beating Lucas Pouille.
All of those matches took place on either grass or hard courts and what’s notable as well is that Novak has started very well in his last five major matches, either winning the opener or losing it in a tie break.
Each of his last four main draw slam matches (against Pouille, Raonic, Paire and Fucsovics) have gone past 37.5 total games and he’s covered a +5.5 game handicap in five of his six main draw matches in majors.
He takes on Hubert Hurkacz, who disappointed for us from an outright point of view in the Auckland semi finals a few days ago, winning only 39% on his second ball and being broken six times by Benoit Paire.
Hurkacz was beaten in four tie breaks by Ivo Karlovic here last year and the Pole is yet to win a match in the main draw of this tournament, so I’m happy to side with Novak in some way here.
Of the matches guaranteed to be played on day one I wonder how Roger Federer will fare early on against Steve Johnson, who’s at least got some confidence back in 2020 by winning the Bendigo 2 Challenger on Saturday.
Fed hasn’t played competitively for a couple of months now and Johnson did take the Swiss star to a couple of tie breaks in their most recent meeting at Indian Wells in 2017, so perhaps if Johnson serves well the over 0.5 tie breaks at 3.25 looks a fair wager.
Federer hasn’t faced anyone with the weapons that Johnson possesses in round one this tournament in his career, with his most recent opposition in R1 matches being: Istomin, Bedene, Melzer (then ranked 300), Basilashvili (then ranked 118), Lu, and Duckworth.
The Swiss veteran can certainly get at Johnson’s weak backhand with the chip and charge, but a longer match than the odds suggest is possible here, with Fed having played 0.26 tie breaks per set in his last 50 main level matches against the big servers in my database.
Novak Djokovic also faces an opponent with real power in round one in the form of Jan-Lennard Struff, who started really well against the Serb at the French last year, but soon faded.
Djokovic hasn’t dropped a set in R1 in Melbourne since losing to Paul Goldstein in 2006, but if Struff brings his ‘A’ game to the court he might be able to end that run of success for the Serb.
Again, the tie break played and over games are options here.
Elsewhere, if the forecast is very wrong and there is play on the outside courts I’d give chances to the following underdogs: Stefano Travaglia, Marton Fucsovics, Roberto Carballes Baena, Sam Querrey, Corentin Moutet, Radu Albot, and Quentin Halys.
Travaglia has been playing some very nice stuff on hard courts lately, while Garin has struggled of late and had injury concerns ahead of his defeat to Lloyd Harris in Adelaide.
RCB actually has a better service hold/break total on outdoor hard at main level than Ricardas Berankis (and almost identical to that of Querrey) and will battle away indefinitely in what may be slow conditions if it rains.
Querrey himself faces a Borna Coric still badly out of form and if Big Sam brings his best game to the court he has every chance there, despite his awful record in Melbourne.
Radu Albot has won six of his last seven matches against the big servers in my database and he’s facing a Milos Raonic who lost to a player not exactly blessed with great power in Corentin Moutet in his only match this season.
Raonic has been plagued by injury and who knows how fit he is at the moment, but Albot may not be fit either after pulling out of Auckland with a shoulder strain.
Marton Fucsovics is another one who looks big in price and is very capable on his day, but who also seems to rarely be fit these days. If he is physically okay we’ve seen him play at a very high level here in Melbourne and he might trouble Denis Shapovalov.
Corentin Moutet has obvious claims on his Doha run and if it is a bit rainy and slow he may have a shot of the upset against the out of form Marin Cilic, while Quentin Halys is a mercurial type and if he’s on a go day he has a big game that could trouble Filip Krajinovic.
It’s guesswork as to whether or not these get on to court though on Monday, so I’ll stick with a couple of small bets on day one.
Best Bets
0.5 points win Novak to win set one at 2.85
0.5 points win tie break played in Federer/Johnson at 3.25
