It’s been a record-breaking few days in Shanghai, with the fewest ever underdog winners in rounds two and three followed on Friday by the most ever in a Shanghai Masters quarter final round.
Three of the four betting underdogs won on Friday, including our 90-1 each-way outright pick, Matteo Berrettini, who took down Dominic Thiem to also provide a 2.55 winner for the daily bets.
So, we’re in that position for the umpteenth time this season whereby we’re within touching distance of a very nice-priced winner, but we need one more victory.
Matteo Berrettini is yet to drop a set so far this week in Shanghai, but this semi final match against (most likely) either Alexander Zverev or Roger Federer was always going to be the sticking point.
Fortunately for those laying off the 45-1 each-way part of the bet Zverev beat Federer, which has surely allowed us a better lay-off price than would have been the case had Fed defeated the German.
Given our woeful record on the outrights in 2019 in deciding matches, which currently stands at 2-10 win/loss, it’s probably prudent to have a saver bet on Zverev to cover the stake money for the week.
Surely our bad luck in these deciding matches has to turn soon, but we’ll be fortunate if Berrettini finds Zverev in such poor form as was the case when they met on the clay of Rome back in May.
Zverev said after a 5-7, 5-7 loss to Berrettini: “The match that I played was horrendous. I will not touch the racket for a few days. I do not feel like playing tennis right now.
He added: “I went on court and I was completely dead. You cannot go on a court like that.”
Ironically, Zverev woke from the dead the next week and beat our 25-1 outright Nicolas Jarry in the Geneva final from match point down (yep, still not over that one) but by and large his form in the last few weeks has been hugely better than for most of 2019.
He’s started to hit through the ball again after spending months pushing at it camped behind the baseline and the serve has been working well again after a period of being prone to a lot of double faults.
The Zverev first serve was strong again versus Federer on Friday, but so was Berrettini’s (in a match played under the closed roof, as I’d hoped) and it seems likely in these quick conditions that we’ll see a tie break or two.
Berrettini has held serve 95% of the time this week and we saw against Thiem that he isn’t the best returner in the world, with Thiem winning 81% of his first serve points and 74% of his second serve points.
We couldn’t have asked for much more from Berrettini this week, with superb stats heading into this match, but with Zverev clubbing down 1.45 aces per game in his three matches this week, I’m going to take the 7-6 to Zverev in set one at 5.80.
If we look at the four matches Berrettini has played in the last year against the players I have in my database as ‘top-10 quality’ we find he’s broken serve only 8.2% of the time on all surfaces and played 0.36 tie breaks per set.
In these Shanghai conditions I’m expecting a match of few chances between this pair and in case our rancid luck in these matches continues the two saver bets will be my wagers on Saturday.
Before all of that there’s the small matter of a clash between two players who’ve been known to not be the best of pals over the years and that’s Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas.
The latter produced probably the match of his season to come from a set down to beat Novak Djokovic on Friday and now he faces a man he’s lost to all four times that they’ve met in Medvedev.
And if I were having a bet in this one I’d be tempted by the 2.75 on the Greek here, given that he started favourite against Medvedev in each of their last three clashes and I feel that Medvedev is too short here at 1.45.
Perhaps the rivalry that played out in public view in their first meeting in Miami last spring and the subsequent Tsitsipas loss on a very hot and humid day in New York later that season have got into Tsitsipas’s head a bit when facing Medvedev.
Tsitsipas had his chances when leading by a break against the Russian on slow clay back in April this year in Monte-Carlo, but let it slip away, and there’s certainly an element of the awkward, flat game of Medvedev rushing the Greek a bit.
He doesn’t seem able to read it or the serve very well and he said ahead of that Monte-Carlo loss: “It [the Medvedev serve] can get really aggressive and frustrating to return.”
It’s likely to be even more frustrating on a fast surface like this one in Shanghai, but we saw in the Djokovic match – not for the first time from Tsitsipas – that he’s able to raise his level considerably against the better players.
This head-to-head isn’t going to merrily continue to go the way of Medvedev I wouldn’t have thought and the Russian looks some way short in price for me here.
My main focus will be on the Berrettini match though, so I’ll pass on the first semi final.
Best Bets
7 points win Zverev to beat Berrettini at 1.62 (only if backed Berrettini each-way outright at 90-1)
1 point win Zverev to win set one 7-6 at 5.80
