It was a bit of a mixed day on Tuesday, with some good results for those who took Ilya Ivashka and Gianluca Mager to win their opening sets, while Cam Norrie and Aljaz Bedene progressed as underdogs on the outright front, but Salvatore Caruso lost and Ernests Gulbis was beaten in a final set tie break.
Mager and Attila Balazs were the big-priced underdog winners in Rio on Tuesday, but while Balazs was one I mentioned as a possibility it was hard to really recommend him as a bet.
We move on to Wednesday, where conditions in Rio will be tough again, with 60-80% humidity for the players to deal with, as well as 30C heat, so very testing conditions indeed.
Based on how poorly Cristian Garin played in his opening round match against Andrej Martin (who should have won) Garin probably needs another week off after his exertions in Cordoba.
I was trying to find someone to oppose Garin with at a good price in the bottom half of the Rio draw, but it’s proving a tricky task and Federico Delbonis has let me down to many times now to trust him to win a tournament like this.
At his best Delbonis is more than capable of beating this Garin, but his price isn’t big enough for a player whose stats are pretty mediocre on clay at main level against the current top-25 lately.
Delbonis is 2-8 win/loss and with a hold/break total of 87.2 in those matches and similarly he’s 2-10 win/loss when priced up as an underdog of at least 2.30 in his last 12 such matches.
Teenage prodigy Carlos Alcaraz Garfia has been talked about for some time now and the 16-year-old, who’s coached by ‘The Mosquito’ himself, Juan Carlos Ferrero couldn’t be discounted against Federico Coria after Alcaraz took down Albert Ramos in round one.
That match has probably taken its toll on the teenager, as it took over 3.5 hours and ended at around 3am local time, so it’s a big ask for him to come back and win again on Wednesday.
It’s far from unlikely though, with Coria hardly that much more experienced at this level despite being over 10 years older.
Coria’s very tight win over Corentin Moutet in round one here was only his fourth main level appearance and he edged a three-hour battle there in a final set tie break despite scoring five points fewer in the match.
Alcaraz has his chances here, but he was a 3.57 shot against Ramos and 2.30 against Coria seems a tad short for my liking and it feels like we’ve missed the boat a bit with him this week.
But perhaps the value today in Rio is on Pedro Martinez Portero, who is showing good form lately and the price on Pablo Andujar today may be too short based on the head-to-head and Andujar’s win over a clearly injured Fernando Verdasco in round one.
Martinez should have beaten Dusan Lajovic in Buenos Aires last week, but blew his chances and ended up losing in two tie breaks, but his stats in his last 10 matches at main tour events are impressive.
He’s 7-3 win/loss in his last 10 (includes qualies) and with a hold/break total of 109 (76.3% holds/67.3% breaks) and that’s better than Andujar by about 4%.
And considering that there was only four points in their clash around 10 months ago in the final in Alicante and the improvement of Martinez since then, I like the price of 2.45 today compared to the 2.29 he was in that Alicante match.
Andujar hasn’t won back-to-back matches in Brazil on clay at main level since 2014 and in these tough conditions I’m happy to take the veteran on here.
Moving on to Marseille’s program for Wednesday now and I like the chances of Mikhail Kukushkin against Pierre-Hugues Herbert as underdog.
Kuku has a solid record against net rushing types, with wins over Nicolas Mahut (three times), Dustin Brown and Mischa Zverev as well as Herbert and in all Kuku is 7-5 win/loss against that group of players.
He beat Herbert last time they met indoors in France at the Paris Masters at the end of 2018 and the Kazakh is defending big points here this week after making the final last year, so he should be motivated to go well.
The pacy courts suit Kukushkin’s game very well, where you’d have to say that Herbert has mostly disappointed at home in France on indoor hard, with a 14-20 win/loss mark and only two quarter finals reached in those 20 main level tournaments.
Herbert’s issue indoors has been a lack of ability to break serve and in his last 50 main level matches on indoor hard he’s broken serve only 12.4% of the time.
Indeed, Kukushkin leads the way indoors over Herbert statistically both long and short term, with Kukushkin winning 52% of his last 50 main level matches indoors and with a hold/break total of 101.5 compared to the 42% and 97.3 of Herbert.
In their last 10 matches each indoors (and plenty of indoor surfaces are too slow for Kukushkin’s ideal) Kuku is 50% and 100, while Herbert is 40% and 96.3.
Kuku will also have had more time to practice here, with Herbert winning the doubles in Rotterdam on Sunday afternoon, and I don’t mind taking the Kazakh as underdog.
I wouldn’t be surprised either to see Stefanos Tsitsipas and Felix Auger Aliassime given good tests today, with Tsitsipas only rocking up here on Monday after a spell in London and I still feel with him that he finds it hard to get motivated for these smaller tournaments these days.
He’ll likely find Mikael Ymer a tough opponent to put away, while FAA clearly wasn’t in full health last week and might struggle after a tough week in Rotterdam.
Best Bets
0.5 points win Kukushkin to beat Herbert at 2.30
0.5 points win Martinez Portero to beat Andujar at 2.45
