Aljaz Bedene got our daily bets off to a good start on Monday when he won as underdog pretty easily against Max Marterer in Cordoba without facing a break point all match.
Marius Copil was also a winner for those who took that underdog wager, but there was disappointment on the outrights when Pablo Andujar was beaten by Lorenzo Sonego.
We’ve got a dozen matches indoors in Europe on the schedule for Tuesday, along with more round one matches on the clay of Cordoba.
The first one that interests me on Tuesday is the price on Ernests Gulbis in the only match of the day on Court 1 in Montpellier at 11:00 UK time.
Ernests Gulbis vs Hubert Hurkacz
Unless the market has been spooked in some way by a potential fitness issue surrounding Gulbis I’m struggling to see much of a reason why he’s underdog for this first career meeting with the big Pole.
Gulbis was forced to retire with a back injury at the Australian Open when playing well and beating Stan Wawrinka and perhaps there have been rumours of the Latvian not being fully fit.
Otherwise, based on his form at the back end of last season and the start of this I’d have to make Gulbis favourite against Hurkacz, who has only won four matches in his career at main level thus far on all surfaces in a 4-12 win/loss total.
On all hard courts he’s 3-9 win/loss at this level and while he did well again at Challenger level at the start of the year by winning outdoors in Canberra he lost indoors last week to Gregoire Barrere as a 1.53 favourite.
All of the 16 main level matches that Hurkacz has played were within the last 12 months and his stats show that he’s held that big serve of his only 78.9% of the time and broken just 14.3% of the time, so he’s got work to do at this level on those numbers.
Gulbis played very well indoors when we backed him at a big price in Stockholm and he made the final there and in his eight matches on this surface last year he chalked up a very decent hold/break total of 106.3 (5-3 win/loss).
The back issue is a concern, but at these prices Gulbis looks worth risking.
Elsewhere in Montpellier, Pierre-Hugues Herbert’s lack of ability on return of serve leads to loads of tie breaks – 0.33 per set in his last 12 months on indoor hard and 0.36 per set here in Montpellier in his six-match main draw career.
He’s actually lost six of the nine tie breaks he’s played indoors in the last year at main level and four of the five here in Montpellier, so I might be tempted with overs in Herbert’s match with Denis Kudla, although the latter’s stats indoors are very mediocre.
Benoit Paire was forced to cut short his trip to the Rennes Challenger last time out as he had to attend the funeral of a friend, so I’m not so sure that I’d want to be backing a bereaved Paire at 1.38 (he’s lost 9 of his last 19 main level matches when priced between 1.30 and 1.50).
Nicolas Mahut was one that I thought about against Filip Krajinovic, with the latter having been beaten by several ‘net rushers’ in his time; probably due to that style of player mixing it up and moving the Serb around.
Krajinovic likes to play with a rhythm from the back of the court and has lost to Mahut (1-1), Herbert, Stakhovsky and Ebden in his time, but Mahut looks past his best now and had some back problems in qualies on Sunday.
He also has a fairly poor record in Montpellier and hasn’t won back-to-back matches in the main draw of any tournament at any level for almost a year, so perhaps I’ll leave that one.
In Sofia on Tuesday the one I’m thinking about is to take the man that benefitted from that Paire retirement in Rennes, Yannick Maden, when the German takes on the out of form Adrian Mannarino at around 10:00 UK time.
The slumping Frenchman lost to Jurij Rodionov last week in Rennes and has failed to win more than one match since making the Kremlin Cup final indoors last autumn.
He’s made little secret over the years for his dislike/unsuitability for playing on indoor hard and his stats show a hold/break total of around 90 for much of his main level career on this surface.
When he’s lacking confidence Mannarino is one that does get down on himself and it wouldn’t be much of a shock if Maden, who just edged past Franko Skugor in qualies, was simply too solid for an out of form Mannarino to hit through.
Best Bet
0.5 points win Gulbis to beat Hurkacz at 2.04
