It’s a busy day of hard court tennis on Tuesday, with 18 matches scheduled in Marseille and Delray Beach and those are the two events I’m focussing on today.
There’s nothing to report from Monday, as rain washed out play in Rio, but hopefully Nicolas Jarry will play a bit better on Tuesday after a woeful start against Roberto Carballes Baena.
Maybe a few took a chance on the price on Lukas Lacko that I indicated as being too big: the inconsistent Slovak won in straight sets at 3.25.
Radu Albot vs Ivo Karlovic
In outdoor conditions I expect Karlovic to gain swift revenge for his loss last week indoors in New York, with Albot holding some awful stats on this surface at main level.
The Moldovan has lost 26 of his 31 main level matches on outdoor hard in his career, holding serve only 67.5% of the time and breaking 19.6% of the time in those 31 matches.
He’s 0-3 win/loss at Delray Beach, again holding serve less than 70% of the time (69%) and only breaking serve 14% of the time in those matches (versus Sock, Isner and Benjamin Becker).
Even Isner broke Albot three times here last year and while Albot has beaten both Isner and Karlovic indoors at the New York Open he’s 0-6 win/loss against the big servers in my database on outdoor hard (and only one tie break set in the 17 sets played).
If we compare Albot’s performance in the last 12 months indoors to outdoors the difference is stark: indoors he has a hold/break total of 100, while outdoors he’s on 89.6.
Karlovic actually plays relatively few breakers here in Delray Beach: only 0.36 per set in his 19 matches here, compared to his usual mark of getting up to 0.50 per set.
Only 34% of the matches at Delray Beach in the last six years have featured a breaker, so a price of around 4.33 on no breakers here looks good value, but clearly risky.
Karlovic -1.5 games at 2.20 looks the bet here for me given also that Karlovic has actually broken serve a whopping (for him) 11.5% of the time at this tournament.
John Isner has produced a similar sort of opening to his 2019 season as he did in 2018 and I wouldn’t be stunned if Peter Polansky did something against Isner on Tuesday.
Isner has struggled so far this season and it’s not so easy to transition from indoor hard to windy outdoor hard and whatever the reason Isner has very often been severely tested in his opening match at Delray Beach.
Last year he dropped his opening set of the week to Albot; the pervious time he played here he lost in his first match to Marinko Matosevic; the year before that in 2014 he dropped the opening set to Michael Russell; in 2013 he dropped a set to Jesse Levine; in 2012 he had to play a 32-point tie break to avoid dropping a set to Levine and in 2011 Isner lost to Teimuraz Gabashvili.
Isner won’t be feeling in the best of spirits after his weak opening to the year and following a loss last week in New York from match points up, while Polansky did beat big servers Reilly Opelka and Marius Copil on slow outdoor hard in the USA last season (Miami and Indian Wells), winning three of the four tie breaks played.
The bets to consider in this one are the +1.5 sets on Polansky at around 2.30 or the set one to the Canadian at 3.90.
Dan Evans is coming back to form after his ban and he’ll face defending Delray Beach champion Frances Tiafoe at around 23:00 UK time on Tuesday and this is one that Evans has every chance in.
That wicked slice that Evans possesses is as good as ever and having beaten Tiafoe in their only prior career meeting (admittedly a long time ago at Challenger level) he’ll fancy this after coming through qualies.
And that’s an advantage to Evans against an opponent that suffered a poor loss on indoor hard last week and a year ago, despite winning the title at the end of the week, struggled early on, going the distance in all of his first three matches here in 2018.
Andreas Seppi is playing here for the first time in his career and in his long and very decent career the Italian has only once made a quarter final (no further) on outdoor hard in the United States.
For me events like this one, Indian Wells and Miami are too slow for him and our long shot outright Bernard Tomic has every chance of the underdog win here and more so considering he’s 4-0 against Seppi at all levels.
Briefly in Marseille, there are chances for Sergiy Stakhovsky (in a repeat of yesterday’s loss to Constant Lestienne in which he won 12 more points yet lost), Matteo Berrettini and Peter Gojowczyk as slight underdogs.
Best Bets
1 point win Karlovic -1.5 games to beat Albot at 2.20
1 point win Polansky +1.5 sets to beat Isner at 2.30
