It’s a typically slow start to the tournaments in this week’s ATP 250 events on Monday, with just two main draw matches set for day one at the Sofia Open, and as far as recent history goes Sofia and Montpellier are pretty average in terms of producing underdog winners.
We’ve seen 28% in Sofia’s three years on tour and 31% in the last six years in Montpellier, while the latter event has produced an average of 42% tie break matches and the former 43%.
Starting in Sofia and 17-year-old Bulgarian wild-card Adrian Andreev looks a tad out of his depth at this level, but he doesn’t have the worst round one draw against Matt Ebden, who's lost eight of his last 10 indoors at main level.
Indeed, Ebden has held serve only 67% of the time in those 10 matches, stretching back three years to a 6-4, 6-1 loss to Thiemo De Bakker here in Sofia (his only appearance at this event) in 2016.
The layers still make Ebden a 1.03 chance to beat Andreev, which probably says a lot about the unranked Andreev’s level just at the moment (he’s only won one completed match at any level in his career so far).
There’s more chance of an upset in the second match in Sofia at (not before) 16:00 UK time when last year’s finalist Marius Copil takes on Stan Wawrinka and as I mentioned in my outright preview Copil has compiled some fine stats on this surface lately.
He’s held serve 90.2% of the time in his last dozen matches on indoor hard and in his seven matches in Sofia he’s held 93.8% of the time, so this is a tough-looking opener for Wawrinka.
For all Stan’s comments that he’s feeling fine, he’s not (at the moment) the player he was pre-injury and it’s Copil that leads the hold/break stats on this surface in the past 12 months by 5.5%.
The Romanian will be motivated here, with ranking points to defend, and backing him to cause the upset at 2.55 is a fair enough option for day one.
Moving on to the Cordoba Open and there are two I like here, with both Aljaz Bedene and Malek Jaziri holding appeal as underdogs.
Aljaz Bedene vs Maximilian Marterer
Bedene made the final the last time he played a main level clay event in Argentina, beating Ramos, Schwartzman, Vesely and Delbonis before losing to Thiem in the 2018 Buenos Aires event.
He didn’t have a great rest of the year at all, but in the close-season he’s changed racquets, had an eye operation and employed a mental coach, so he’s doing all he can to give himself a boost for 2019.
And he has just the sort of grinding baseline game to coax errors out of Maximilian Marterer on a slow surface, so I’m happy to take Bedene as underdog in this one.
Despite struggling for the last four or five months of the season Bedene still managed to record a service hold/break total of 100 on clay at main level in 2018, which is slightly better than Marterer (98.2) and the young German still has a way to go on his return game.
Bedene created 0.71 break chances per game on clay at main level in 2018 and considering that he also won more points on his first serve (71.1%) than the bigger-serving Marterer (67.4%) I wouldn’t be happy about backing the German at odds-on here.
There’s also an experience gap here, with Marterer never having played a single match at any level in South America, while Bedene of course has proven form in Argentina.
I’ll take Bedene in this one and I’m tempted to risk Malek Jaziri as a 2.70 underdog against Carlos Berlocq, who turned 36 on Sunday, and who’s lost nine of his last 10 main level matches on clay.
Indeed, Charly has only managed to hold serve 69% of the time and break a measly 11.4% of the time in those 10 matches and if we’re going purely on stats Jaziri, who’s numbers were excellent in 2018 on clay could be big value.
Jaziri leads the way for the whole of the players in this event in terms of service hold/breaks totals, with an impressive 107.9 from his 14 matches in 2018 on clay at main level, but the worry with him is fitness.
He’s never played a main level match on clay in South America and the last time he played one here at any level was 2013 and he’s failed to complete his last two matches this season.
It’s still a shockingly bad price on Berlocq though at 1.48 and Jaziri is another value option on day one.
Best Bet
0.5 points win Bedene to beat Marterer at 2.25
