We’re in Montreal this week on outdoor hard courts for the first of back-to-back weeks of M1000 tennis and switching from grass or clay to hard courts can sometimes cause problems for betting favourites.

Overall, in the last four renewals of the Rogers Cup in Montreal (2011, 13, 15 and 17) 33% of betting underdogs have won, which puts this tournament in the top-20 for frequency of dog winners on the tour.

Last time it was here in 2017 there were 38% underdog winners in round one and there may be a similar level of opportunity in Montreal this time, with players getting back used to hard courts.

As far as tie breaks are concerned, 38% of the matches in the last four Rogers Cups in Montreal have featured at least one breaker.

Day one of the main draw on Monday has 13 matches on the card and conditions are set to be pretty much perfect: around 25C and with little wind.
 

Jan-Lennard Struff vs Jo-Wilfried Tsonga

Tsonga’s finest moment (in my eyes at least) came in Canada in 2014 when he beat Djokovic, Murray, Dimitrov and Federer back-to-back (dropping just one set) to win Toronto in 2014, but those days look long gone at the moment.

Injuries have taken their toll and against Kyle Edmund last week he was trying to hit winners from all over the place when forced into wide areas, which he will be again when he faces Jan-Lennard Struff.

Struff took down Tsonga the last time they met on a hard court, but Tsonga was badly affected by a knee injury that day and that one doesn’t mean much, however looking at Jo’s recent record versus the better players is interesting.

Tsonga is 3-11 in the last 12 months at main level on all surfaces versus the current top-25, holding serve okay at 82.1%, but breaking just 8.5% of the time.

Struff, in comparison, is 11-13 against the current top-25, breaking serve twice as often, and holding 81.4% of the time.

Tsonga is 7-12 versus top-35 ranked players in the last year, while Struff is 16-15, so although their respective hold/breaks totals for the 2019 season are almost identical, it’s been Struff that’s done the business against the better players more often than Tsonga.

On current form I’m happy to take a chance on Struff here as underdog, with this looking a good opportunity for the German to show that he’s more than capable of winning these sorts of matches now.
 

Lucas Pouille vs Milos Raonic

Raonic doesn’t seem able to really compete for long these days due to a catalogue of injury problems and it’s been the back that has plagued him this summer.

It was a problem for him again last week when he had the trainer out to see to it in a straight sets defeat to Gojowczyk in Washington DC and if Pouille can find some form the Frenchman has to have a chance here.

It was Pouille that knocked Raonic out of the Australian Open earlier this season, with a fine four set win and it was perhaps typical Pouille: winning a match he was underdog for (5.50) on a big stage, having not won a match since the previous October before Melbourne.

And he comes here in equally weak form this time, having made just one main level quarter final since that Melbourne run and he wasn’t good at all last week in Los Cabos.

Even so, he’s more than capable of at least pressing a half-fit Raonic in these conditions, but he’ll need to serve well to have a shot of the upset.

He did that very well in Melbourne, making 65% of his first serves – and he’s upped his average first serve percentage to around the 60% mark in the past year, which is a boost for him.

It hasn’t led to the expected upswing in results that I’m sure Pouille and Amelie Mauresmo were after, but he’s a tempting price and it’s not as if Raonic has a stellar record at the Rogers Cup.

Indeed, he hasn’t won a set in Montreal since making the 2013 final and if we include Toronto he’s lost five of his last eight at the Rogers Cup.

Pouille is hardly the most reliable of sorts, but at these prices I don’t mind taking a chance for small stakes.

Another possible option is Pierre-Hugues Herbert, who has won nine of his last 11 matches against left-handers such as Denis Shapovalov – and the two he lost were in final set deciders.

Shapo may well be feeling the pressure here at his home tournament and one where he beat Nadal and made the semi finals the last time he played Montreal.

He hasn’t shown many signs of being one of those players that go into their shells and basically bottle it in front of their home fans yet – quite the opposite in fact – but he was a new kind on the block then and now they might expect a bit more of him.

And current form is weak, with just two wins in his last 12 matches since making the semi finals of another hard court M1000 event – in Miami back in the spring.

As I said in my outright preview, Shapovalov withdrew from Washington DC last week with a shoulder problem, and also talked about the mental struggles he’s had of late on court.

Mikhail Kukushkin has lost all four of his career matches against Adrian Mannarino, but on the flip side the Kazakh has won seven of his last eight hard court matches at main level versus left-handers, such as Mannarino.

The inconsistent and rather frustrating Mannarino did make the quarter finals here in Montreal in 2017, but his last effort was a weak loss to Norbert Gombos in Washington DC, so this looks a tough call.

Peter Polansky has had his moments in the Rogers Cup over the years, notably against Novak Djokovic and Kei Nishikori a few years ago and I think we backed him in this event to beat Matt Ebden a year ago, too.

Hopefully he won’t be adding to his CV when he faces our big-priced outright Gael Monfils, but I am taking a gamble on the fitness of Monfils and Polansky won’t be lacking in effort.

On paper it looks a nice match-up for Monfils, with Polansky lacking in the sort of power that could hurt the Frenchman, but, as I say, it’s a fitness gamble with Lamonf.

Grigor Dimitrov is another one whose form is currently very poor indeed and if it’s not the shoulder that’s bothering Dimitrov I’d be very concerned about his level if I were a fan of the Bulgarian.

He played very well in defeat to Stan Wawrinka at the French Open in a really tight one in which he lost all three tie breaks, but he’s only won one match since – and that a final set tie break win over Steve Johnson.

Guido Pella was a comfortable winner over Dimitrov on a decent paced hard court last week in Los Cabos and defeats on grass and hard to Corentin Moutet and Kevin King must be a massive worry for the Dimitrov camp.

Wawrinka hasn’t played since a disappointing loss to Reilly Opelka at Wimbledon, but on Dimitrov’s current form it’s hard to see him winning even allowing for the fact that he’s the one who’ll be more attuned to hard courts.
 

Best Bets

1 point win Struff to beat Tsonga at 2.48
0.5 points win Pouille to beat Raonic at 3.05