It’s turned into a bit of a difficult week in week 28, which isn’t a huge surprise, as these pre and post major weeks tend to be either be very good or pretty bad and Pablo Cuevas' display on Thursday was awful.
From 4-1 up and holding a 0-40 lead to go 5-1 up and serve out the opener against Federico Delbonis in Bastad the Uruguayan lost eight games in a row to effectively lose the match in that spell.
Later on in the day Borna Coric did play the three setter that I anticipated, but he lost the decider to Salvatore Caruso, having got back into it.
It’s been minimum stakes all week and it’ll be minimal bets on Friday, with some very tricky looking matches on the card for the quarter finals in Bastad and Umag.
Kicking off in Bastad, where there’s two absolute pick ‘ems (if you dare) between similar styles of player in Jeremy Chardy and Nicolas Jarry and Roberto Carballes Baena and Albert Ramos.
Predictably, Jarry and Chardy went to a final set breaker in a clash that featured just two breaks of serve on slow hard courts in Miami a few months and I’m interested in a set one tie break here at 4.20.
Even on this slow clay in Bastad, Chardy has held serve 88.5% of the time this week and that’s been against fine clay courters in Garin and Carreno Busta.
Jarry breaks serve less than 20% of the time on clay and if he can find his best serving on the day Chardy’s return game is unlikely to do a great deal with it.
Chardy’s weak record in quarter finals (14-31 win/loss = 31% win rate) would worry me backing him in this clash of two players who like to serve bug and wallop the forehand where possible and I much prefer backing breakers here.
The low frequency of tie break matches as a rule in Bastad (only three so far this year) means it’s a decent price and worth chancing with these two.
Albert Ramos and Roberto Carballes Baena both eased through to the quarters thanks to very feeble opposition from Damir Dzumhur and Fernando Verdasco respectively and in these conditions this one could take a while.
They’ve clashed seven times in all (six on clay) and on clay neither man has won more than 46% of their second serve points (they met twice at extreme altitude in Quito) in this match-up.
I’d expect a real grind there and it doesn’t appeal much as a betting heat, but the one bright spot so far this week has been the form of Juan Ignacio Londero, who had to fight, as expected, to beat Hugo Dellien on Thursday.
He’ll now face a repeat of the French Open clash last month against Richard Gasquet and he’s favourite this time – rightly so based on that clash and Gasquet’s injury problems.
The Gasman played a three setter against Dennis Novak on Thursday and you’ve got to wonder whether the Frenchman will have much left for Friday, such is his poor fitness lately.
In any case the aggressive approach of Londero has every chance of prevailing here and the layers agree, making him slight favourite to meet the winner of RCB and Ramos and I’d have taken that at the start of the week.
Finally, much will depend on the wind in Bastad when considering the outcome of Federico Delbonis and Joao Sousa, with the much calmer conditions on Thursday helping Delbonis (not that he needed much help: Cuevas gave him lots of that).
Sousa has won three of their four meetings on clay and if it gets windy again on Friday (it’s forecast to be pretty windy) I certainly wouldn’t be backing Delbonis as favourite there.
Over in Umag at the Croatia Open Stefano Travaglia has an obvious fitness over Attila Balazs, whose two matches here so far have ended in final set tie breaks.
Another of those weak performances this week was from Filip Krajinovic, who failed to serve out sets two and three against Balazs, who is carrying a leg injury, which can’t have been helped by two 2.5-hour-plus matches this week.
Travaglia benefitted from another lame showing this week – this time from regular suspect Fabio Fognini, who called it quits early in set two of their encounter, so the Italian should be the fitter man against Balazs.
Laslo Djere has looked less than fully fit numerous times this season and again he didn’t appear to be in peak fitness in a real struggle against veteran Paulo Lorenzi in his opening match in Umag.
I’d probably fancy Djere to coax enough errors out of Leonardo Mayer, but on the level he showed during the Lorenzi match I think I’ll pass.
I’ll add some thoughts on the later matches in Umag and something on Newport, (which was rained off pretty much on Thursday) on Friday morning.
For now, all I’ll risk in this tricky week is half a point on the set one breaker in the Chardy match in Bastad.
Best Bet
0.5 points win over 12.5 games in set one of Chardy/Jarry at 4.20
