I said yesterday that Filip Krajinovic wouldn’t be winning the Montpellier title after I’d snagged him at 100s at the start and he did what Filip Krajinovic often does: blink when in a good position.
The Serb led 4-2 in his opening set tie break against Gael Monfils on Saturday and didn’t win another point in the breaker and only two further games in the match in an all-too predictable collapse.
After that, the man we backed in the week before Melbourne at 33-1 in Auckland, Vasek Pospisil, survived the latest choke when serving for a set/match from David Goffin to make a final at 40-1 the week after Melbourne in Montpellier.
“I am proud of myself for fighting for every point, but I also feel a bit lucky to get through that one,” Pospisil admitted.
There’s some luck going around at the moment then (not for me, obviously) and perhaps none have been luckier this week than Jiri Vesely, who survived four match points against Ricardas Berankis to make the Pune final, having saved two the previous match against our man Ilya Ivashka.
Maybe his luck will run out today when he takes on Egor Gerasimov in the Pune final at around 11:30 UK time in what will be a second career meeting after Gerasimov won the first one in qualifying for Dubai just over a year ago.
Gerasimov was comfortably better on second serve that day, winning 56% of his points on that ball compared with just 41% for Vesely and there was a tie break in set one, which there may well be today.
I said early on this week that more tie breaks were likely as the week went on and after only seven tie break matches in the first 23 matches this week (including qualies) there have now been 12 in the last 14, including four breakers in the five sets played yesterday.
And given the stats of the two protagonists in the Pune final on Sunday, who could argue that a tie break or two is likely again: Service holds of 90 and 89% respectively; 0.98 and 1.26 aces per game respectively; 79% and 82% first serve points won respectively and 0.20 and 0.50 tie breaks per set played respectively.
They each have faced one break point every three service games they’ve played and saved 65% or so of those each, so you’d think chances would be at a premium here unless title match nerves kick in.
The bet I like here is to take Gerasimov to take the opening set 7-6 at a price of 6.40, with Gerasimov having a far superior tie break record at main level (14-6 win/loss, winning 70% of them) in his 28-match career than Vesely, who’s 16-17 win/loss in his last 50 main level matches (48.5%).
On the other two finals on Sunday before we move on to Rotterdam, New York and Buenos Aires, Gael Monfils will surely like this match-up in the Montpellier title match against Vasek Pospisil, who he’s beaten all five times they’ve played.
Indeed, Pospisil is yet to win a set against Monfils in a one-sided head-to-head that’s seen the Canadian hold serve only 72.5% of the time, while Monfils has been untouchable at 96.1% holds in this career series (all played on indoor and outdoor hard).
On his form of the Krajinovic match and the match-up this should go the way of Monfils, but he’s only won 28% of his main level finals (8-21) so it would be very Monfils to somehow lose this one in a final against an opponent he’s previously dominated (he’s 2-3 win/loss in finals he’s been a sub-1.50 favourite in).
The Cordoba Open final should be a good one, with Diego Schwartzman all the rage at 1.37 to beat Cristian Garin and that looks short to me, with once again last night Schwartzman dropping a set and having to battle for the win against Laslo Djere.
This pair have met five times, with Schwartzman yet to beat Garin in straight sets in any of their four clay encounters (2-2 so far) and while Garin has taken some time to get going in his last two matches he has the quality to make a real match of this.
On their clay main level stats of the last 12 months there’s little in it: Schwartzman having produced a service hold/break total of 102.7 and Garin better at 106.3.
If we only look at the last 10 matches (nine in Garin’s case, as that’s all he’s played) played by the pair on clay at main level against the current top-25 we see that Garin’s hold/break total is 98.2 and Schwartzman’s is just 91.7.
Add in nerves that are likely to be felt by Schwartzman after his woeful showing as favourite in the Buenos Aires final a year ago and the quality of Garin as an opponent and 1.37 looks short to me on Schwartzman.
On form Schwartzman may well edge this one and 2-1 to him at 3.85 looks a fair bet, as does over 26.5 games at 3.35.
Best Bet
0.5 points win Gerasimov to win set one 7-6 at 6.40
