Hopefully, Thursday’s preview put a few people off backing Fernando Verdasco and Borna Coric at around the 1.45 mark in Marseille, but my expectation that we’d get a performance (a tennis performance) from Benoit Paire didn’t exactly materialise.
A lot is down to Aljaz Bedene now this week, with the 18-1 outright shot a 1.35 chance to progress to the semi finals in Rio, but as we saw with Sam Querrey last week, that doesn’t mean a lot sometimes.
It’s quarter finals day in Marseille, Rio and Delray Beach and I like two wagers on Friday.
Andreas Seppi vs Dan Evans
This first meeting between Evans and Seppi is an intriguing one indeed, but I think there’s just about enough in it to side with Evans, given Seppi’s weak record both in the USA and in the latter stages of tournaments.
The Italian, who turned 35 on Thursday, has won 10 of his last 23 main level quarter finals and three of his last 17 semi finals and on US outdoor hard courts this will be only his third quarter final (no further) in what will be his 57th attempt.
Granted, many of the events he’s played in the US have been Masters Series or the US Open, but at ATP 250 level he’s yet to win three straight matches on US outdoor hard courts.
That could all change of course, but in these often very windy conditions in Delray Beach I like the slice of Evans that is really tricky to counter with pace, as Frances Tiafoe found out the other day.
I was surprised last year that a player that hits very flat like Peter Gojowczyk was able to make the final and for me if you’re going to play like that here you need to be in superb form to make it work.
Seppi is a flat hitter too and we’ll see how he gets on trying to make powerful forehands off the sliced ball of Evans in these conditions.
If we’re looking at main level stats on this surface it’s Seppi that shades it on serve, holding a fraction more at 80.4% compared to the 78.3% of Evans, but the Brit is a fair bit better on return.
Evans has broken 25.7% of the time in his 33 main level matches on outdoor hard (19-14 win/loss), while Seppi in his last 50 (27-23 win/loss) has broken 20.6% of the time, so it’s Evans that leads the overall combined totals.
The other one that interests me on Friday is to side with Mikhail Kukushkin against Andrey Rublev in Marseille.
I talked up Kuku’s chances as underdog in the last round versus Denis Shapovalov, but the Kazakh’s record against lefties put me off; here the match-up looks more favourable.
As I said before the Shapo match these quicker indoor conditions just help Kukushkin to get a bit more out of his flat shots and given that he beat Rublev twice in a matter of days on much slower indoor hard in Vienna at the end of last year the omens look good here.
As well as that we have the issue of Rublev’s inconsistency to consider, with this week being only the second time that the Russian has strung together back-to-back wins at main level for over a year.
Looking back at the four-match career series between Kukushkin and Rublev we find that even including the one that Kuku retired in there’s still a big gap between the pair in service holds, with Kukushkin holding 80.6% of the time and Rublev only 69.4% of the time.
The Achilles heel of Rublev – the second serve – has been an issue in these clashes, with Rublev managing to win only 45.7% of the points on his second ball.
The counter-argument here is that Rublev will use the quick conditions to hit right through Kukushkin and that’s possible, but he’ll have to carry on playing very well – something that has been a real problem for Rublev and I’m happy to take Kukushkin as underdog in this match-up again.
Elsewhere, Adrian Mannarino has lost his last nine in a row against the big servers in my database and all six completed matches against John Isner, so hopes aren’t high for an upset in that one.
Mannarino gets annoyed far too easily when the serves fly past him regularly and his flat hitting for me isn’t best suited to Delray Beach, so I’m expecting an Isner win there.
Briefly in Marseille, Stefanos Tsitsipas has lost all four of his career meetings with the ‘net rushers’ Herbert, Stakhovsky and Mahut, so despite his strong start against Hurkacz the other day I’d have reservations about backing him at 1.17 against Sergiy Stakhovsky today.
Stakho has a good record in Marseille, where it’s quick enough for him to play an attacking game, and while Tsitsipas should be able to adapt, I wouldn’t back him at 1.17 to do so.
Matthias Bachinger played well against an admittedly flat leftie in Fernando Verdasco yesterday and I wouldn’t be surprised if he were able to repeat an odds-against win versus the improving Ugo Humbert today.
Humbert is surely likely to have an off day soon and 1.37 on him looks very short.
Best Bet
0.5 points win Evans to beat Seppi at 1.84
0.5 points win Kukushkin to beat Rublev at 2.04
