Our match was void on Tuesday when Radu Albot became the fourth male player to withdraw pre-tournament this week and that left Marco Cecchinato to play yet another tie break on a hard court, but against lucky loser Leo Mayer.
Play was severely affected by rain in Auckland on Tuesday, but our man Vasek Pospisil dodged the drizzle and made it through to round two against the returning Joao Sousa, who was predictably off the pace after injury.
Another of our outrights, Dan Evans, made it through handily again, with the Brit easing past Alexander Bublik and into the quarter finals.
But the rain has made Wednesday’s play in Auckland a bit tricky for some players, who’ll have to play twice in the same day if they want to reach the quarters and they are: Feli Lopez or Pablo Andujar, Adrian Mannarino or Andreas Seppi and Cecchinato or Mayer.
The weather forecast suggests it’ll be better in Auckland on Wednesday, with a cool, cloudy day of around 20C in the shade and with not a great deal of wind around, but in Adelaide 30kph winds are expected and it’ll be cooler there, too, at 26C in the shade.
I wonder if the wind in Adelaide will affect the bigger servers there, with Sam Querrey, Lloyd Harris and Jan-Lennard Struff perhaps likely to find it a bit harder to find their biggest deliveries in the wind – if that forecast is correct.
Sam Querrey’s awful record in Australia (he could easily have lost to Gregoire Barrere on Monday) shows that he’s never been past the third round of any main level tournament on Aussie soil and he’s 4-11 win/loss away from the Australian Open in this country.
He’s yet to better round two in Adelaide, Brisbane or Sydney in his career, so it’ll be a first if Querrey’s able to beat the in-form Andrey Rublev, who should have had time to prepare having come from Doha where he won the title on Saturday.
Rublev edged past Querrey in two tie breaks when they clashed in similar conditions in Winston-Salem last August, but the big price drift on Rublev puts me off backing him here, indicating a less than committed effort might be possible from the Russian after his Doha title.
Lloyd Harris has a game that should be effective on hard courts against Laslo Djere, who’s 8-26 win/loss away from clay in main level tournaments, but the Serbian did beat Lorenzo Sonego in Doha and Alexei Popyrin here (both as a decent underdog) on Sunday, so he may be improving in quicker conditions.
Harris at odds-on isn’t for me and I prefer a different bet today in Adelaide.
Pablo Carreno Busta vs Jeremy Chardy
The layers went with the head-to-head here in making Chardy favourite for this 02:00 (approx.) clash on Show Court and in these conditions I’m not sure that’s the right move (prices now changed to have Carreno Busta slight favourite).
Chardy beat PCB twice on slow clay last season, but it took him three sets on each occasion and at the time the Spaniard was early into a comeback from injury.
When they met in Estoril at the end of April PCB had played only two matches since the Australian Open and Carreno Busta didn’t find his best form until later in the year when he played well on the US hard courts and then won Chengdu on quick outdoor hard.
The faster conditions seem to suit PCB better than clay, with his record on outdoor hard courts clearly better than those on clay, with PCB having won 33 of his last 50 main level matches on this surface and with a service hold/break total of 108.6.
On clay he’s 27-23 in his last 50 and with a hold/break total of 103.6, while three of his four main level titles have come on hard courts and only one on the clay.
As for Chardy, he finds it easier to defend his weak backhand corner on slow clay and can be rushed into errors on that side on quicker surfaces, which is something I’d expect PCB to try and exploit today.
The wind likely won’t help Chardy’s higher risk game either and if we look at Chardy’s stats on outdoor hard over his last 50 main level matches we find that he’s won half of them and with a hold/break total of just 99.3 (breaking serve only 15% of the time).
PCB won the only prior outdoor hard court encounter between this pair at almost identical odds to those of today’s match (in Los Cabos in 2016) and he has an 11-6 win/loss record when priced up as underdog between evens and 2.30 at main level.
The one factor in Chardy’s favour here is that he’s played more singles matches this season so far, but I’ll take PCB.
Over in Auckland I wouldn’t be shocked to see John Millman go close against Karen Khachanov, with the Russian last season unable to reproduce his form of 2018 and losing as favourite 19 times in 38 matches in 2019.
Against the ‘baseline grinders’ in my database, Khachanov has a 16-14 win/loss record at main level, which is hardly impressive for a player of his gifts and if he’s not on somewhere near his best form this could turn into a tough one for Khachanov.
I also wouldn’t be stunned to see Tennys Sandgren take down John Isner, whose form so far in 2020 has been really poor and who’s tended to start seasons slowly in recent years.
Sandgren had his chances against Isner when they clashed in Stockholm indoors around 15 months ago and that one went to three tie breaks before Isner edged it, but Sandgren plays well at this part of the season and the defending champion may just want it that bit more than Isner.
Two of our outrights are in action on Wednesday, with Hubert Hurkacz favourite to get past Mikael Ymer, who’s on the upgrade right now, while Vasek Pospisil has a shot against his Davis Cup team-mate Denis Shapovalov.
Shapo has been in good touch lately, but he lost here first up last year to Joao Sousa and perhaps Pospisil can catch him cold again.
Best Bet
1 point win Carreno Busta to beat Chardy at 1.83
