We enjoyed a nice start to week 40 of the ATP Tour on Monday when our one daily bet was a winner and the outright we had in action on day one eased into the next round.
Jiri Vesely should have beaten Gilles Simon 6-4, 6-2, but made a meal of the opener from 5-3 ahead, although it didn’t much matter, as the Czech ran out a pretty comfortable winner in that one.
Our 70-1 outright bet, Pablo Cuevas, was also an underdog winner on the day (although by the time Vesely began his match the Czech was favourite after originally being priced up as underdog) in a fairly routine straight sets victory over Taylor Fritz.
We saw last week in Rome that transitioning to clay from hard courts after a six month break from tennis wasn’t easy, with even Rafael Nadal not at his best, along with some rotten displays from the likes of Gael Monfils and Stefanos Tsitsipas.
So, it’s not that unlikely that Daniil Medvedev on his worst surface might struggle too in what will be his first match on clay since losing to Pierre Hugues-Herbert at the French Open in May 2019.
Indeed, Medvedev has lost his last four matches on clay and the numbers of his last 10 main level matches on the dirt are poor for a top-five ranked player.
In those 10 matches he’s 5-5 win/loss and with a service hold/break total of just 99.2 and if we go further and take his 16 career matches on the clay at main level into account that total becomes 96.7.
We know he enjoys quicker conditions than this and the centre court at the Rothenbaum was clocked at 25.5 CPI on Monday, which makes it as slow as Centrale Court in Rome was on Saturday.
Medvedev is scheduled to face Ugo Humbert at around 18:00 local time on Tuesday at which time it will be getting slower and I wouldn’t be surprised if Humbert caused problems for Medvedev in this match.
Humbert is far from best suited to clay either, but he played well on it last week in Rome, beating Kevin Anderson and (an admittedly rusty) Fabio Fognini and taking the opening set off Denis Shapovalov, who came so close to making the Rome final.
Humbert has only played eight main level matches on clay, but his numbers are similar to those of Medvedev (96.0 hold/break total) and I don’t mind risking him to win set one here at odds of 3.35.
Nikoloz Basilashvili has started well in most of his matches since the tour’s resumption before appearing to check out mentally once that early advantage disappeared.
Against Felix Auger-Aliassime he led *4-3 in set one before losing in two sets, then he led 4-2 against Federico Delbonis (also lost in two) and against Lorenzo Sonego he led 3-1 before winning only one further game in the match.
And now he faces Roberto Bautista Agut, who hasn’t had a match on the clay yet this mini swing, as he’s just become a father, and you’ve got to wonder how much practise RBA has had in the last few weeks.
On his best form this is winnable for Basil, who beat RBA when they last met (on outdoor hard) and won the opener 6-1 when they clashed on slow clay in Monte-Carlo in 2017, but it’s hard to back Basil at the moment on current form and with everything that’s going on in his life.
If you can get a ‘score after 4 games’ bet on Basil to lead 3-1 at a price of around 6-1 that might be worth doing though, with Basil likely to be interested at the start of the match, given that he’s the two-time defending champ here.
In their three career meetings, RBA has never led at the four-game mark, so there’s a possibility here if you want to risk Basil at the moment.
Philipp Kohlschreiber is another one likely to be highly motivated here playing at home at a tournament that he’s made the semi finals in a couple of times and he’s won seven of his nine career clashes (4-1 on clay) with Fabio Fognini.
And Fognini, by his own admission, is struggling right now after double ankle surgery recently.
“At the moment I have to be honest, I'm not 100 percent and [need to] reach my form, because I had surgery and recovery is going well but I still need time,” he said at the start of this week.
Kohli isn’t the player he was, but he still should win that one given Fogna’s current condition.
Felix Auger-Aliassime wasn’t very good at all in his Rome loss to Filip Krajinovic and his clay numbers aren’t the best, so I like the idea of taking the overs or set one overs in his match against Lorenzo Sonego.
FAA has broken serve only 12.8% of the time in his last 10 main level clay matches, while Sonego has managed it just 15.7% of the time, so assuming this pair of biggish servers go well from the service line you’d think that even in these slow conditions there may not be many breaks.
Over 10.5 games in set one at around 3.25 appeals here.
Gael Monfils will need a big improvement on his pretty dismal level of last week in Rome, but Lamonf’s price of 1.84 is tempting, given that it must be based purely on that Rome performance and the run of his opponent Yannick Hanfmann in Kitzbuhel.
Monfils rarely plays well in Rome and he’s now won only two of his last 10 matches there, failing to even win a set since 2012 at the Foro Italico, so perhaps he was always going to struggle there considering that it was his first match back since the resumption.
All of Hanfmann’s 11 main level clay victories have come at venues with altitude (Kitzbuhel, Munich and Gstaad) and this will be just his third match at this level at a non-altitude venue (0-2 so far).
Yoshihito Nishioka is a possibility as underdog against Dominik Koepfer, but it’s based purely on probable fatigue on the part of Koepfer, who played 19 sets last week in Rome.
On debut at home with a special exemption though is bound to motivate Koepfer and it says a lot about Nishioka on clay that Koepfer is still favourite even with all that tennis in his legs.
Given the style of play that Koepfer has, Nishioka is unlikely to be blown away like he was by Grigor Dimitrov in Rome, but I’d need to see a lot more from Nishioka on this surface before I back him at anything other than big odds.
Karen Khachanov versus Jan-Lennard Struff looks accurately priced as a real pick ‘em of a match, while I’d expect the clay skills of Dusan Lajovic and Albert Ramos to see them through against opponents who much prefer quicker conditions in Adrian Mannarino and Alexander Bublik respectively.
Best Bet
0.5 points win Humbert to win set one at 3.35
