Wednesday’s play began with an odds-against winner when Radu Albot proved as competitive as I expected him to be against David Goffin in Halle and the over games landed at 2.18.
Then we lost outright Jan-Lennard Struff in a tight deciding set against Karen Khachanov, before another odds-against winner when Borna Coric and Joao Sousa played out the tough match I expected and our over 10.5 games in set was a 2.80 success.
At the Noventi Open on Thursday we’re told to expect more warm weather, with little chance of rain, but they have a roof anyway, so we’ll get play there on day four.
It looks like they might get a better day in west London on Thursday, too, with no rain forecast, but they’ve got a lot of catching up do there after two days of rain.
The two Frenchmen on the card for Thursday in Halle both look to have realistic prospects as betting underdogs, with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga facing Roger Federer and Richard Gasquet taking on Roberto Bautista Agut.
Tsonga has actually won four of his last seven matches against Federer, but they go back to between 2012 and 2016 and it remains to be seen whether Tsonga, after a lot of injury problems, still has the level to take on elite opponents.
The only occasion that this pair met on grass came back in 2011 and it was the first time that Federer had ever lost a best-of-five set match on grass from two sets to love up (he’s 79-2 in his career from 2-0 up on grass, with Anderson the only other loss at Wimbledon last year).
In their career series as a whole on all surfaces, Federer has a 5% advantage in holding serve over Tsonga, so it’s been quite tight, and there may be some value in siding with Tsonga to make it a test for Federer.
I wouldn’t want to back him +3.5 games at odds-on, but Federer to win it 2-1 at 3.75 might be worthy of a small interest, with Jo always in with a shot of taking one on a breaker (he’s won 5 of their 11 tie breaks).
Richard Gasquet vs Roberto Bautista Agut
But I prefer taking a chance on Gasquet on grass against Bautista Agut, who hasn’t coped well with quality opposition on this surface in his career and looks a bit short to me at 1.60 here.
If we look at the recent grass court careers of these two (Gasquet’s last-50 main level matches and RBA’s all-time main level career) we find that Gasquet’s service hold percentage is 87.1% (33-17 win/loss).
And that holds up when we look at matches played versus the current top-25 on this surface (86%) and in his last 10 main level matches on this surface (85.5%).
We can’t say the same about Bautista Agut, who has held serve 82.7% of the time in all of his 36 main level grass court matches (25-11 win/loss), as that drops down to 78.2% in matches on grass versus the current top-25.
And his match record against the better players on grass is weak: 1-7 win/loss versus players ranked in the top-20 at the time of the match and 6-9 win/loss against top-50 opposition.
Gasquet is currently outside the top-50 due to injury, but he’s certainly top-20 class on grass when fit and after 12 matches now in his comeback from injury he should be fit enough.
The Gasman looked gassed in a tame loss to Jordan Thompson last week in Rosmalen, but he had played two matches in one day (well, one and a half really) the day before and this time he’s had a day off after a very comfortable win over Peter Gojowczyk on Tuesday.
RBA was made to work very hard early on by Taylor Fritz, who had four set points to win their opener and then downed tools once he’d lost it.
If the layers are going on the head-to-head here (it’s 2-1 to RBA) that’s perhaps an error, with their last clash coming back in 2015 in Tokyo when Gasquet hadn’t played for weeks, saying: “I was tired after the US Open. I didn’t practice too much.”
We also have our 100-1 outright Steve Johnson going for us on Thursday and after all sorts of reports came out on social media saying that Alexander Zverev has a knee problem our man has a fine chance here.
He had a decent chance anyway, but Zverev pulled out of the doubles and has drifted markedly from around 1.30 to 1.60 for this one after he was reportedly spotted ‘hobbling’ around the grounds in Halle.
On current form it’s hard to see Matteo Berrettini slipping up against Andreas Seppi, but the older Italian did come out on top in straight sets here in Halle a year ago in their only career meeting.
That was Berrettini’s first career main level match on grass though and Seppi was a 1.67 chance that day, whereas he’s a 4.10 shot this time, highlighting the level that Berrettini has found very quickly this grass swing.
He’s currently running at a service hold/break total of 121.7 in his six grass matches this summer, with 100% holds of serve, and while he’ll fall off that level soon enough, it’s tough to see Seppi being the one to bring him down.
Best Bets
1 point win Gasquet to beat Bautista-Agut at 2.35
0.5 points win Federer to beat Tsonga 2-1 at 3.75
