Debrief

 

We hit the post again with two of our three outright bets at the French Open, with both Andrey Rublev and Diego Schwartzman both falling in their ‘for the money’ matches in Paris.

Given that we’ve now lost 13 of the last 20 of these profit or less matches, that comes as no great surprise, but I still feel that Rafael Nadal was beatable in this year’s conditions and our 75-1 each-way pick Schwartzman simply didn’t start well enough against Nadal in their semi final.

He certainly deserved set three of that match, but by then it was too late, of course.

Now we move on to week 43 of the ATP Tour, which has two new ATP 250 tournaments and one that’s been upgraded to an ATP 500 for us to have a go at.

 

Conditions and trends

 

The St. Petersburg Open has been upgraded to an ATP 500 this year from its usual 250 status, which led the tournament director to laud it as “the most spectacular and prestigious moment in our history,” but that might have been before all of the somewhat inevitable withdrawals.

Three of its four highest ranked players are now out, with Stefanos Tsitsipas, Matteo Berrettini and David Goffin all withdrawing, as well as big names, such as Pablo Carreno Busta, Grigor Dimitrov, Kei Nishikori, Kevin Anderson, and, on Sunday, Jannik Sinner.

Russian stars Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev are still in (at the time of writing), but then they were last year as well, so “spectacular” might be stretching it a tad.

They play at the Sibur Arena again this year, where the Rebound Ace indoor hard surface is usually on the slower side and there will be fans in attendance this week in St. Petersburg.

It’s been won by the top seed the last couple of years, but prior to that it was usually a good one for the bigger-priced players, with Thiem in 2018 being the first top-seeded winner for a decade.

Qualifiers haven’t gone well here by and large, with Egor Gerasimov last year being the first qualifier to better the last eight since Sergiy Stakhovsky won it back in 2009.

It could well be different this year though, with many of the big names coming directly from playing on clay, while the qualifiers will have had much more time to prepare on indoor hard.

The other two tournaments this week, the bett1HULKS Indoors in Cologne, Germany and the Forte Village Sardinia Open in Italy are new, having both been granted one-year licences to operate this year and the latter event will be played in a bubble at the Forte Village Resort behind closed doors.

Fans are allowed into the Cologne event, which is the first of two back-to-back indoor tournaments in the German city, with the bett1HULKS Championships following next week.

Both events in Cologne will be played at the Lanxess Arena in the city, which is an indoor arena (also a Rebound Ace surface) that’s usually the home of ice hockey side Kölner Haie.

 

ATP Cologne – draw

A decent field has assembled for the first of Cologne’s back-to-back tournament weeks, headed by Alexander Zverev and Roberto Bautista Agut, but you’ve got to wonder how motivated (and prepared) the high seeds are this week after the clay season.

If new dad RBA is up for it, which is questionable, he looks to have a decent draw in the bottom half, but on the form that Marton Fucsovics showed in Paris, the Hungarian may be a tough opening match for the Spaniard.

You rarely know what to expect from Fucsovics, but if he carries on as he did in Paris, where he should have beaten Andrey Rublev, then he’d have every chance this week, with doubts about the other high seeds in this bottom half.

I’m not quite sold on a price of around 20-1 though and I’d want a bit bigger before taking a punt on the frustrating Hungarian.

Jan-Lennard Struff has a weak record in Germany and tends to choke pretty much every time he plays at home, while Felix Auger-Aliassime hasn’t looked good for the most part since the resumption of the tour. Maybe he will this week, but his price is too short for me at around the 7-1 mark.

Hubert Hurkacz and Pierre-Hugues Herbert are others to consider, along with Bautista Agut.

In the top half, Alexander Zverev may or may not have recovered from the illness that affected him in Paris and he may or may not have had time to prepare for long enough on indoor hard.

He’s only won one of his last four tournaments when seeded first in a 250 or 500 – and that was fortunate, as I recall to my cost, when Nicolas Jarry blew match points in the Geneva final last season, allowing Zverev the title.

We’ll see what Andy Murray has left in the tank, but either Murray or Fernando Verdasco won’t be an easy starter for Zverev and Filip Krajinovic, Kyle Edmund or maybe Ricardas Berankis are the ones I’m looking at here.

Edmund’s knee injury that saw him skip Hamburg and the French puts me off him a bit, even at 20-1, while I’d want bigger than 50-1 about Berankis in this field, but 12-1 or so about Krajinovic looks worth taking.

The Serb disappointed his followers in Paris, but it was always likely to be too slow for him there and it’s on indoor hard that his numbers really show up well, with a 12-4 win/loss mark in the last 12 months at main level and a superb hold/break total of 114.9.

With those numbers I’m happy to take 12s about Krajinovic in this half of the draw as my main bet in Cologne this week. 

 

ATP Sardinia – draw

Another top seed that doesn’t have a good record when seeded number one is Fabio Fognini, who’s on a run of 1-7 win/loss when he’s been the top seed in a main level tournament.

The most recent of these was last month in Kitzbuhel when he was taken out by Marc-Andrea Huesler 6-1, 6-2 and while that was no surprise at all really, given his recent ankle operation Fog can still be taken on this week.

He’s looked better since Kitzbuhel and he’ll probably be a contender this week, but the last time he won a title when seeded first was back in 2014, so I’m happy to oppose him again here.

I’d imagine it’ll be quite windy here, next to the beach, and the forecast suggests a decent enough week weather-wise, but whether or not it’ll be warm enough to make it quick clay conditions is doubtful.

Many of the players in the Sardinia draw are coming directly from the Parma Challenger and they include: Federico Delbonis, Andreas Seppi, Frances Tiafoe, Marco Cecchinato, Gianluca Mager (who retired in Parma citing a lower back injury), Salvatore Caruso, Yannick Hanfmann, Giulio Zeppieri, Kamil Majchrzak, and Laslo Djere.

Mager got moved to the main draw and therefore didn’t have to qualify for Sardinia, so it’s entirely possible he just fancied the Sardinia main level option more than busting a gut for less money in Parma, but I wouldn’t be one of those people that would think that, of course.

Of those players in the above list, Tiafoe and Caruso are in the final in Parma, which has been delayed until Monday, so they’ll probably be tired and in any case I don’t fancy Delbonis (who made the Parma semis) much in the likely wind by the sea – he failed to make a final in five tries next to the beach in Bastad, so I doubt it’ll suit him here.

Albert Ramos was a winner for us in Bastad a few years ago and he’s played well there a few times, meaning he’ll probably be able to handle any coastal wind pretty well, but he doesn’t look like he’s playing with much confidence at the moment.

Tommy Paul has clay pedigree and played well in Paris, while Corentin Moutet has the ability to win a tournament of this stature, too, but my concern with him is that damaging defeat at the French that may linger for some time in a player not known for his mental strength.  

The qualifying draw looks pretty decent in Sardinia and with five spots in the main draw coming from the qualies that could be a place to look for some value in Sardinia this week.

Federico Coria and Jozef Kovalik look the ones most likely to do something this week and at 50-1 Coria is worth taking a small risk on in his current form and mood.

The bottom half of the draw sees young sensation Lorenzo Musetti take his place in this field with the intention of going deep after beating Wawrinka and Nishikori in Rome, then winning the Forli Challenger (beating Tiafoe, Seppi and Thiago Monteiro), but he did lose to Tiafoe in Parma last week and he’s got a lot of tennis in his legs at the moment.

Casper Ruud is the obvious choice in the bottom half, but he was well beaten by Dominic Thiem in Paris and may take time to get over that loss and knowing my luck, the guy I backed in Hamburg, Dusan Lajovic will probably win here.

Lajovic had his chances against Tsitsipas in that Hamburg quarter final and his draw looks decent, but 8-1 is too short for me about Lajovic this week.

 

ATP St. Petersburg – draw

The last and only time that Daniil Medvedev faced Richard Gasquet ended in the Gasman bagelling the Russian on indoor hard, but Gasquet was a 1.44 favourite that day at home in Montpellier in 2018 and the odds of a Gasquet win are a tad different in 2020.

Still, it may not be an easy opener for the defending St. Petersburg champion, who hasn’t been able yet to recreate the superb form he showed in 2019, and after Gasquet he’d probably have to take on the huge serve of Reilly Opelka.

As well as Gasquet and Opelka there’s Milos Raonic, Karen Khachanov, Borna Coric, Tennys Sandgren and Alexander Bublik, who all have claims on their best form, so this is no easy half of the draw for Medvedev.

Coric made the final here last year, but he had a really nice draw and usually struggles on indoor hard, so he’s too short in price for me, while Raonic hasn’t made a final in any of his last 10 indoor hard tournaments since winning here in 2015.

Raonic is also too short on that basis, so I’m looking at Khachanov, Bublik and Sandgren for a bit of value in this half.

Khachanov at 9.50 is a tad short, although he did show signs of coming back to form at the French Open, so long shots Sandgren and Bublik, both of whom showed good form on a surface that’s too slow for him (heavy clay) in recent weeks.

A return to a quicker surface should certainly suit both of these guys and Bublik has shown the better form of the two indoors, with the Kazakh making the semis in Rotterdam earlier in the year, beating Fucsovics, Paire and Shapovalov before losing to Tsitsipas.

The bottom half looks much more open, with Denis Shapovalov, Andrey Rublev and Stan Wawrinka perhaps the most likely on paper to progress, but surely Rublev will be tired after all the clay matches he’s played in the last few weeks and he has a tough one first up in Vasek Pospisil, who’s been playing well lately on hard courts.

Wawrinka looks past his best now and hasn’t won a title indoors since 2015, so Shapovalov looks the likeliest of the seeds in conditions he should find suitably on the slower side.

But he has a tough opener as well against the hit and miss Sam Querrey, who can be effective in these conditions, but Big Sam hasn’t progressed indoors and has made only one final indoors in his career (the 2018 New York Open that he lost to Kevin Anderson) and Querrey hasn’t made a semi final in Europe away from grass since 2010 (when he made two clay finals).

There are quite a few alternatives to Shapo in this half, with Pospisil, Mikhail Kukushkin, Ugo Humbert and Egor Gerasimov being the ones on my shortlist.

Of these, I like the 28-1 or so about Humbert, who, like Bublik and Sandgren, played very well on unsuitably slow conditions on the clay recently (apart from a round one loss in Paris) and the Frenchman’s record indoors is decent.

He made the semis of both Antwerp and Marseille indoors last season and this price is fair enough about a player of his quality in indoor conditions in a section of the draw that has Rublev and Taylor Fritz as the high seeds.

There’s every chance Rublev won’t have the legs this week, while Fritz’s record indoors is mediocre to put it generously, so Humbert for me here.

 

Conclusion

 

In Cologne, then, I’ll take Zverev on with Krajinovic, while in St. Petersburg I’ll go with Bublik and Humbert. Nothing massively stands out to me in Sardinia, but I don’t mind taking a punt on Coria who’s playing confidently at the moment and 50-1 is about right.  

 

Best Bets

 

1 point win Krajinovic to win Cologne at 13.0
0.5 points win Bublik to win St. Petersburg at 41.0
0.5 points win Humbert to win St. Petersburg at 29.0
0.5 points win Coria to win Sardinia at 51.0