On Friday, both Jan-Lennard Struff and Matteo Berrettini produced the kind of power tennis that’s virtually unplayable on this surface, which foiled a couple of our bets, but we ended up making a small profit on the day.
Berrettini won 90% of his first serve points, while Struff won 88% of his and that makes the rest of the game much easier with the confidence that you’re going to win almost all the points on your first delivery.
The Milos Raonic versus Marton Fucsovics match went as expected though, with the value 3.20 bet on no tie breaks landing, although the downside there was losing an outright.
We did manage to get a big-priced outright through to the semi finals in Rosmalen though, when Adrian Mannarino came back from a set and a break down to defeat a wasteful David Goffin, who had a terrible day on serve.
I said yesterday that Mannarino wouldn’t have a better chance to beat Goffin that here on grass, but it was another of those peculiar performances from Goffin, who threw in 10 double faults as well as making only 44% of his first serves.
It might be another delayed start in Rosmalen on Saturday, with more rain forecast up until around 14:00 local time, while Stuttgart’s weather looks okay for semi finals day.
Adrian Mannarino vs Borna Coric
Our 25-1 outright Mannarino looks perhaps the value of the day on Saturday, so the question is do we go in and back him again?
The Frenchman was a tad fortunate to find Goffin on a rather poor day on Friday, but Coric was lucky as well in the sense that his quarter final opponent Cristian Garin blew it from a double break up in the final set of their clash.
Indeed, Garin lost from 1.01 in-play and Goffin from 1.03 in-play, so both Mannarino and Coric looked highly unlikely semi finalists, yet they were able to grind out the wins.
Mannarino has always had a very good game for grass and it could well prove too much for Coric, as it did when the pair clashed in Antalya on the grass in the summer of 2017 (and prior to that on slow outdoor hard in Miami).
Those matches were a little while ago now, but I’m still not convinced by Coric on grass, despite that highly unlikely run to the Halle title last season and if Mannarino plays to somewhere near his best level he’s got every chance here.
Coric is only 9-8 win/loss on this surface in his career and while his last 10 matches on grass do show an improvement, I’m expecting Mannarino to cause the Croat all sorts of problems with his flat hitting on grass.
Coric likes rhythm in his game and he won’t get that here, with Mannarino’s unorthodox and late shot selection likely to keep Coric off balance as it did in Antalya, where Coric only won 42% of his second serve points compared to the 64% of the Frenchman.
I hope that the very slow starts that Mannarino made against Fernando Verdasco and Goffin won’t leave him short of energy for today, but if he’s fit – and he should be after only 27 matches played all year – I do feel that his style will cause a lot of problems for Coric.
The Croat plays a lot of deciding set matches at the moment, with 14 of his 22 best-of-three set matches going to a decider in 2019 and if you don’t trust Mannarino (and who could blame you?) over 2.5 sets at 2.35 looks a fair option.
But 1.47 about Coric is an awful price in these conditions against Mannarino and I’m going in again on Mannarino here at 2.70.
In the other semi final between Richard Gasquet and Jordan Thompson I’d expect the classier Gasquet to come through – provided he isn’t too tired after playing twice in one day on Friday.
The Gasman had to come back and finish off Mikhail Kukushkin before defeating Nicolas Jarry later on and I’d be worried by his fitness if I were backing him today, but he should have too much variety and ability for Thompson.
The Aussie won a poor affair against compatriot Alex De Minaur, who still doesn’t look fit based on that match, and unless Gasquet is tired I can’t see many ways that Thompson can win this one.
In Stuttgart at the Mercedes Cup the very brave will look at the 3.05 about no tie breaks in the clash between Jan-Lennard Struff and Matteo Berrettini and think about backing it.
Neither man has played a breaker at all this week, but each man has held 100% of the time and been very impressive in their aggressive game styles so far and I personally think the match odds are about right here, with Berrettini slight favourite.
Struff still has lots to prove for me when he’s in pressure situations – he just hasn’t been in any this week, but surely that won’t last – and we’ll see how he responds under pressure from the Italian, who has been superb so far.
Struff has never made an ATP final and at home in a semi final it’s classic Struff choking territory – he’s 0-6 in semi finals and 1-12 in sets in those matches.
I think there’s probably more chance of a breaker in the other semi between Felix Auger-Aliassime and Milos Raonic, with FAA playing three of them on Friday, and firing down 30 aces in the process.
He’s taken to grass nicely and while he was another one was a tad fortunate that he was able to fashion a win from a losing position on Friday he has a fair shot against Raonic if he can serve somewhere near to his level against Dustin Brown.
FAA is unlikely to fold under the pressure of holding like Fucsovics did and breakers look likely here, with Raonic a bit too short for me at 1.49.
Best Bets
0.5 points win Mannarino to beat Coric at 2.70
