Friday was a more pleasing day when both of my daily bets were winners in straight sets and our remaining outright progressed through to the semi finals in Rio.
Mikhail Kukushkin and Dan Evans were pretty comfortable winners in Marseille and Delray Beach, while Aljaz Bedene failed to impress against Hugo Dellien, but sneaked through anyway in three sets on the clay in Brazil.
It looks a tricky old day on Saturday and I’m just going to have the one wager on day six and a bit of a hedge.
Mikhail Kukushkin vs Ugo Humbert
I’m happy to have a small interest on Kukushkin as underdog in this one, with Humbert, as well as he’s been playing, likely to have a let down at some stage and he hasn’t really been tested this week yet.
Humbert has been on the front foot in all of his matches so far in Marseille this week: Gulbis started slowly and was always playing catch-up, while Coric was very rusty and Bachinger was poor.
We’ve seen a lot of Humbert as an attacking force, but very little indeed of the defensive side of his game and surely that (along with his backhand) will be tested out more on Saturday by Kukushkin.
The forehand of Humbert is very effective in these conditions, as is his serve, but the backhand doesn’t look so special, and Kukushkin will surely be looking to target that wing – and the Kazakh has a very good backhand down the line with which to adopt that tactic.
I said yesterday that Kuku had the game to defuse Andrey Rublev and we saw how he stuck to the game plan of playing time and again to Rublev’s backhand to break it down, which worked a treat.
It’s a bit trickier against a leftie, but Kuku has done it once already this week against Denis Shapovalov, and he’s playing with a lot of confidence at the moment.
We’ve seen in Davis Cup over the years just how well Kuku can be when he’s in the right frame of mind, but rarely has he been able to transfer that level to the main tour.
It looks like he is doing it at the moment and Humbert will have to play a great match to win this and at odds-on I don’t see any value in backing him to do so.
Going back to the Shapovalov match, Kuku had to watch 18 aces fly past him in two sets, yet he stayed calm and took the only chance he had all match to break the Canadian.
It might be a similar story today and a small investment on Kukushkin looks the play.
In the other Marseille semi I have a sneaking regard for the chances of David Goffin, who looks to be getting back towards his best form after a couple of good matches this week.
It’s a bit of a pick ‘em against Stefanos Tsitsipas, who hasn’t been tested at all this week so far, but I just feel that the Belgian might want it a bit more than Tsitsipas, who’s been talking about finding it difficult to get going after the high of Melbourne.
In Delray Beach a lot could hinge on how windy it is on the day in the match between John Isner and Dan Evans with a blustery day favouring the Brit, who showed exactly what I had hoped for against Andreas Seppi on Friday.
And Evans isn’t without a chance against Isner if the wind gets up and puts the big man off his serve and it’s forecast for 25kph winds at 15:00 local time when this match starts.
It’ll also be pretty hot at 30C, so if Evans can drag this one long he might be in with a chance against an Isner who will need to serve at his best to win this one.
The drawback for Evans is his lack of height against the Isner serve on a bouncy court in sunny conditions, but he has form against big servers (beat Cilic at the Australian Open).
This Isner serve is pretty much unique though and Evans may not get much of a chance if Isner is hot from the service line.
I would expect Mackenzie McDonald to beat Radu Albot in the other semi final, with Albot riding his luck this week so far against a poor Ivo Karlovic, a barely half fit (and barely interested) Nick Kyrgios and he was a set and 3-1 down to a choking Steve Johnson.
After beating a far from 100% fit Juan Martin Del Potro on Friday night McDonald looks the right favourite here, with the attacking attitude to take the match to Albot in these conditions.
In Rio we backed Aljaz Bedene outright as the value choice at 18-1 and that was the right bet, but he had the trainer out and had off-court treatment for a hamstring problem in a patchy display at best versus Hugo Dellien on Friday.
A more experienced opponent than Dellien would probably have beaten Bedene and Laslo Djere, despite the 0-3 head-to-head against Bedene, looks worth backing today if you took the 18s on Bedene outright.
Djere, for me, has played the better tennis of the two so far and there’s enough in that 18-1 to have a point on Djere as a bit of a hedge in this one.
The obvious stumbling block (apart from Djere) for Bedene backers is Pablo Cuevas, but he’s being overrated a tad in my view at the moment and perhaps priced on what he’s done in the past, rather than what he’s doing now.
He’s playing pretty well, but not at the level of old, and the best tennis of the week in Rio has arguably been played by Felix Auger-Aliassime, who’s taken down three fine clay courters, all in straight sets.
If he doesn’t get nervous on Saturday and carries on in the manner that he has been all week he has his chances against Cuevas, who’s coming off the back of a 2.5 hour grind against Albert Ramos in which he won just a single point more in the match.
Indeed, Cuevas won only 37% of his second serve points against Ramos and Cuevas looks short at 1.34 here on current form.
Best Bets
0.5 points win Kukushkin to beat Humbert at 2.0
1 point win Djere to beat Bedene (only if backed Bedene outright at 19.0) at 1.81
