Friday was a pretty good day for us, with our outright in Brisbane, Daniil Medvedev, making it through to the semis there, while our one daily bet was a winner when Ivo Karlovic covered the handicap against Steve Darcis in Pune.
At the time of writing the Doha final is yet to be determined, but it’ll be two big priced finalists whatever happens after Roberto Bautista Agut took out Novak Djokovic form a set down in Friday’s semi final.
So, I’m looking at Brisbane and Pune on Saturday, starting with our outright hope, Daniil Medvedev, who takes on Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the semis at around 10:30 UK time.
The layers have Medvedev as slight favourite for this at 1.73 and that looks about right given that Tsonga, as well as he played in knocking out Alex De Minaur on Friday, still needs more matches to find his best form.
It was certainly a much improved Tsonga from the one we saw coming back from injury last season, but De Minaur’s lack of raw power allowed Tsonga to move around his weaker backhand side more often that Medvedev will surely (hopefully) allow him to on Saturday.
Medvedev’s flat hitting off both wings should keep Tsonga honest and I’m happy to trust our man in a backhand-to-backhand battle.
Should he get past Tsonga he’ll face the winner of the Jeremy Chardy versus Kei Nishikori clash and potentially set up a repeat of the Tokyo final of a few months ago.
Nishikori’s vastly superior backhand is likely to be key in this 10th (ninth at main level) career clash with Chardy and it’s the Japanese star that’s won 12 of the last 13 sets that this pair have contested.
Looking into the stats of their career series we find that Chardy has only managed to hold serve 66.7% of the time against Nishikori on all surfaces (four of their clashes were played on clay), while Nishikori has held his own deal 81.3% of the time.
Chardy has faced a whopping 0.89 break points per game against Nishikori and the Frenchman has a poor record in main level semi finals too, losing 10 of his 13.
Nishikori has actually only won three of his last eight main level semi finals, but it’s hard to fancy Chardy in this match-up.
Kevin Anderson vs Ivo Karlovic
Anderson is into the Pune final for the second straight year after extended Gilles Simon’s sequence of losing in straight sets the match after back-to-back three setters in a best of three sets tournament on Friday.
His reward is to face the oldest man to make an ATP final since Ken Rosewall back in 1977 – Ivo Karlovic – who was made to work hard by Steve Darcis in Friday’s semi final.
The last twice that Anderson and Karlovic have clashed has seen the Croat retire early on each time and they haven’t played a completed match against each other since 2013 when Karlovic beat Anderson in the Bogota semi final.
If we look at Anderson’s career record against the big servers in my database we find that he has a losing record of 26-34 on all surfaces at levels and 14-24 on outdoor hard.
In total in the 33 matches on outdoor hard that stats are available for we find that Anderson has held serve 87.8% of the time and broken just 9.5% of the time, playing 0.38 tie breaks per set.
Karlovic is 8-8 win/loss on outdoor hard against the big servers in my database and holds 94.6% of the time, breaking a mere 5.8% of the time.
We need to take Anderson’s recent improvement into account though, so just looking at the last three of his clashes against big servers, not a lot has changed, with Anderson breaking serve 10.1% of the time.
What is striking is the amount of times that Anderson has dropped sets to the big servers in my database, with only one of his last 10 matches against them being won by Anderson in straight sets and only one of his last 14 on hard courts only.
It doesn’t look a day (as semis and finals days often aren’t) for anything more than a small wager, but the 2-1 set score to Anderson at 3.55 looks the bet.
Best Bet
0.5 points win Anderson to beat Karlovic 2-1 at 3.55
