It was a great week for our daily bets last week, with seven winners from our eight bets, the last of which was another comfortable success when Jo-Wilfried Tsonga easily covered the handicap in the Montpellier final against Pierre-Hugues Herbert.
We stay on indoor hard in Rotterdam and New York this week, while the Golden Swing on the clay heads to Buenos Aires and as far as betting trends are concerned the most likely spot to find an underdog winner this week is in Rotterdam.
New York started its life on the tour with 33% underdog winners last year (and 48% of it’s matches featured a tie break), which is about average, but with only one year’s stats to go on in Long Island, Rotterdam’s 32% over the last six years is a more accurate reflection of the tournament (also 41% of its matches featured a tie break).
Buenos Aires has only produced 27% underdog winners in the last six years (and only 27% of its matches have featured a tie break) and its qualies are far from complete at the time of writing so I’ll focus on Rotterdam and New York on day one.
It’s a pretty slow start to the week in Rotterdam and New York, with just three main draw matches at the New York Open and four at the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament on Monday.
Noah Rubin vs Jordan Thompson
I’m happy to take on Thompson as odds-on favourite in this 00:30 UK time clash on Tuesday (19:30 local time on Monday) at the New York Open.
The vast majority of Thompson’s best work comes at Challenger level, but rarely does he make the step up to main level successfully, and a couple of wins at home in Australia at the beginning of this season doesn’t really paper over the cracks for me.
He didn’t beat much at all in four main level victories in that Aussie swing and if we look at his main level record in the United States it shows that Thompson has won only four of 16 matches on all surfaces.
Looking at the same criteria for Rubin we find that he’s also won four (from 14) and three of his last six and playing at his home tournament the 22-year-old from Long Island will be hugely motivated for this one.
He played pretty well in defeat here a year ago versus Kei Nishikori and he’ll see this opening match in 2019’s New York Open as very winnable after a narrow defeat to Thompson at Challenger level last October.
Rubin warmed up for this on indoor hard at the Cleveland Challenger last week, while Thompson hasn’t played singles since the Australian Open, so the Aussie may also be a tad rusty.
Monday doesn’t look the best of days for ATP betting, but a small stakes interest on the highly motivated Rubin against an opponent that struggles badly adapting to a higher level looks the call.
In Rotterdam I’d expect Stan Wawrinka to get the better of Benoit Paire in their 12th career meeting (8-3 so far to Wawrinka) with the Swiss having won almost 14.5% more of the second serve points in their career series.
Paire struggles to get his serve working far too often against the better players and has held only 73.2% of the time in his last 50 main level matches on indoor hard, which doesn’t help his cause.
He also has a poor record in Rotterdam (as several of the French players do, with this event coming in-between Montpellier and Marseille) of 1-4 win/loss, 67% holds of serve and 12.2% breaks of serve.
After talking about his improvements in the mental side of the game last week Paire was booed off in his next match after putting in one of his trademark pathetic efforts, so we’ll see if he puts the work in on Monday.
He often does against the better players and probably will against Stan, but it’s hard to see it being enough.
Robin Haase has had a tough time of it in his Rotterdam career over the years, but he got a little lucky with the draw last year that saw him to the quarter finals and a set lead on Roger Federer before falling in three.
He’s got a tricky one first up against Mikhail Kukushkin and I couldn’t back Haase here as favourite, given that he’s lost 31 of his last 50 main level matches on indoor hard and has an inferior hold/break total than Kuku, who’s 25-25 in his last 50.
Haase is 6-9 in the Rotterdam main draw, with a hold/break total of 94, so backing him at 1.74 looks pretty poor value even allowing for him playing at home, which doesn’t seem to have been much help to him over the years in Rotterdam.
Hyeon Chung’s level is virtually impossible to predict these days, while his opponent on Monday, Nikoloz Basilashvili, was ill last week in Sofia, so that one looks one to avoid.
Peter Gojowczyk is another tough one to call usually, due to his often poor first serve percentage (50% only in his six matches this season) and I wouldn’t be happy about betting on him right now with that level of serving.
Best Bet
0.5 points win Rubin to beat Thompson at 2.07
