I talked about the playing conditions here at the Lindner Family Tennis Centre in my outright preview, but as Montreal proved last week it’s still a little bit of guesswork, with conditions at the mercy of meddling tournament directors at any time.
It’s been a tournament that has produced a healthy 41% of underdog winners over the last six years (and also the same figure over the last three years) in round one, so I’ll be looking for some upsets on Monday and Tuesday.
Overall, the tournament has produced a fairly average 32% of underdog winners in all rounds and 39% of its matches have featured tie breaks, with most breakers coming in round two (42%) and in the semi finals (58%) in the last six years.
We have 13 men’s matches set for round one in this joint ATP/WTA event on Monday when the weather in Mason is forecast to be warm at 30C in the shade with 50% humidity, but not much wind around.
We’ve already got off to a good start, potentially, with our outrights, as my assumption that Rafa Nadal would pull out proved correct and that’s opened up the bottom half of the draw nicely. Let’s see if our guys can take advantage.
I’m happy to take a chance on a tie break in the match between Nick Kyrgios and Lorenzo Sonego, which is scheduled for (not before) midnight UK time, with the set one breaker a tempting 3.50 chance as well.
This season at main level on all surfaces Sonego has played 0.32 tie breaks per set – and 23 of his 32 matches have been played on clay.
Indeed, he played six tie breaks in four matches in Kitzbuhel last time out and while that’s at altitude it rained for most of the week and was nowhere near as fast as the year before.
Kyrgios plays 0.30 tie breaks per set and breaks serve a measly 12.2% of the time on all surfaces in 2019, while Sonego only breaks 15.5% of the time evne though he plays mainly on clay.
In the nine matches this season that weren’t on clay Sonego has played at least one breaker in seven of them and he holds his big serve 85% of the time on all surfaces in 2019 – which is very good considering he plays so much on the red dirt.
I was tempted with Adrian Mannarino as slight favourite against Cristian Garin in these conditions with the balls flying around and Manna has played well in Cincy the last couple of times he’s visited Mason.
He’s won three of his last five here, with the two losses coming against Novak Djokovic in a final set last year and in two breakers to Dominic Thiem in 2017.
His flat ball should cause Garin problems and rob the Chilean of time, but what puts me off is the left hand injury that Mannarino seemed to have against Fognini in Montreal.
I’m happy to take a bit of a risk on Matteo Berrettini taking longer to finish off Juan Ignacio Londero than the layers think.
Berrettini hasn’t played since Wimbledon due to an ankle injury he picked up in training and so his last memory of a match court was the absolute shellacking that he received from Roger Federer on Centre Court.
We’ve seen with David Goffin post-Wimbledon what a heavy loss can do to a player’s confidence and with a worry over his ankle as well this may not as smoothly as expected for the Italian.
Add to that Berrettini’s very average record on outdoor hard courts so far in his career and the layers are putting a lot on trust with the favourite here.
Berrettini is 5-10 win/loss on this surface in the last 12 months at main level and he’s broken serve just 14.6% of the time in those matches, holding serve 84.9% of the time (99.5 total).
Not brilliant, that, and Londero has at least had a couple of matches on hard courts in recent weeks beating Cristian Garin and losing narrowly (two points in total) to Soonwoo Kwon.
Of course, Londero has limited experience on a hard court and would obviously prefer a slower surface, but we’ll see if Berrettini can dispose of him easily or not – he certainly had an incredibly hard time beating Schwartzman on grass.
Slight odds-against on over 22.5 games is a fair option here.
Denis Kudla let us down quite badly in his home event in DC the other week and he’s really a hard one to try and call, with big ups and downs in his form, but he seems to be going well this week.
Kudla has already beaten Cam Norrie and Alexei Popyrin in qualies (Popyrin beat Kudla pretty easily in Atlanta) and in these tricky conditions that qualifying experience can be a decent advantage over someone coming in cold like Lucas Pouille.
In any case, Pouille is in awful form right now and Kudla beat him in similar conditions in Washington DC a year ago, so in theory Kudla – who should have beaten Nick Kyrgios here last season – looks a lively underdog.
Pouille has lost four of his last six matches when priced up in the 1.50 to 1.69 price range and he’s only 7-6 all-time win/loss at main level on outdoor hard in that range.
I’m only going to go small on Kudla after last time, but 2.45 against a horribly out of form Pouille looks fair enough (he was 2.09 when he beat Pouille in DC last season).
Miomir Kecmanovic can’t be discounted either against Felix Auger-Aliassime nor Gilles Simon against Pablo Carreno Busta, but Simon’s weak record in Cincy is a little off putting (one win since 2011)
Best Bets
0.5 points win Kudla to beat Pouille at 2.55
0.5 points win tie break played in Kyrgios/Sonego at 1.95
0.5 points win over 22.5 games in Berrettini/Londero at 2.05
