We found one winner and one loss on Thursday in Sofia when Robin Haase did enough to land us the +1.5 sets wager on the Dutchman to beat Daniil Medvedev, but Jan-Lennard Struff, despite playing well, ran into a Stefanos Tsitsipas in fine form on the day.
It’s quarter finals day on Friday, with12 matches on the card in Sofia, Cordoba and Montpellier and I’ll start in France.
Open Sud de France
The all-French affair in Montpellier between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Jeremy Chardy is likely to go the way of the former, with Chardy being another of those French players who seems to almost respect the pecking order in French tennis.
He’s 1-3 against Tsonga, 1-5 versus Gasquet, 1-4 against Simon and 1-3 versus Monfils, making a combined 4-15 win/loss record against the ‘big four’ of French men’s tennis (over the last decade or so).
Tsonga isn’t the player he was, but I’m not convinced that Chardy has the right mentality to take advantage against him.
Similarly, Filip Krajinovic usually doesn’t have the game to match-up against the better players on tour and fades rather quickly mentally, as his 4-15 record against top-20 opponents shows.
His only wins came against Marco Cecchinato on outdoor hard, Fabio Fognini back in 2014, and two wins in that end-of-season Paris run of a couple of years ago versus Isner and Querrey.
Tomas Berdych may be 79 in the world right now, but he’s top-20 level still, and he should have too much power for the Serb in this one.
Marcos Baghdatis vs Radu Albot
We’ve already landed a winner with Albot this week and I’m happy to take him again today in this (not before) 18:00 UK time clash with Baghdatis, who looked to be at the end of his physical resources in a tough three setter against Lucas Pouille on Thursday.
Baggy has had to come through qualies this week and he’s now played 10 sets and had the trainer out to work on his left leg three times in the final set against Pouille.
Albot will make him play a lot of balls with his solid style and I’m harbouring serious doubts as to whether the notoriously brittle Baghdatis (retired or withdrew 17 times in the last six years) can cope with another potentially long day on court.
The last time that Baggy won four matches at a tournament (Chengdu 2017) he retired in the fifth match, and the last time he successfully won five straight matches was in the 2014 Genova Challenger.
The last time he did it at a main level tournament was Sydney back in 2010 and the last time he made a main level semi final as a qualifier was in Basel in 2005, so I’m happy to take Albot on fitness here.
I said yesterday that Pierre-Hugues Herbert was short in price against Ilya Ivashka and the latter should have won it in two, creating 11 break point chances to one against in the first two sets, but he collapsed from there rather spectacularly.
Denis Shapovalov beat Herbert as a big underdog in the 2017 Canberra Challenger and the Frenchman is 2-7 win/loss against lefties so far on indoor hard in his main level career, so I’d take Shapo in this one.
We’ve got two outrights going for us in Sofia and Cordoba on Friday, with the first one, Jaume Munar, having a decent opportunity to potentially make the final, facing Federico Delbonis today and then the winner of Juan Ignacio Londero and Pedro Cachin for a place in the title match.
That section of the draw has worked out just as I’d hoped and now it’s up to Munar, who’s probably had a fair bit of practice time against lefties at Nadal’s academy.
He’s 15-8 at all levels against lefties on clay, but 0-2 so far at main level, although our man is playing at a much better level now than when those matches took place and perhaps the home crowd cheering on Delbonis will be another issue for Munar to deal with today.
The inconsistent Delbonis had lost eight of his last nine clay matches against top-100 opponents before this week and he’s had a couple of three setters already in Cordoba and I’m hopeful of a Munar win here.
Our other outright (60-1 Martin Klizan) has a tough one against Daniil Medvedev in Sofia, who beat the Slovak en route to the Tokyo title last autumn, so it’s a hard one for Klizan, but he does have a hold/break total of 112 in his 11 main draw matches (8-3 win/loss).
It shows how much the game of Medvedev has come on lately that he was a 1.80 chance for that October clash with Klizan and now the Russian is a 1.30 shot today.
Best Bet
0.5 points win Albot to beat Baghdatis at 2.14
