The tour rolls on to Rio, Marseille and Delray Beach in week seven and given that there’s no schedule out for Monday anywhere other than at the Open 13 Provence, that’s where I’ll start.
The most upsets in this week of the ATP Tour are usually found in Rio, where conditions are usually hot and humid and a real test of stamina for the players on the red dirt.
There have been 39% underdog winners in Rio over its six years on the tour, which puts it right up there in the top-10 in terms of underdog winners of all the tournaments currently on the ATP Tour.
There are usually a lot of breaks of serve here, with an average of only 73% holds over the last three years and just 27% of its matches have featured a tie break in its six years on tour.
Delray Beach and Marseille both weigh in with 31% underdog winners, while Marseille features a lot of service holds (82% on average in the last three years, which puts it inside the top-10 in that regard) and 42% of Marseille’s matches in the last seven years have featured at least one tie break.
It’s slower in Delray Beach, but it’s still had 80% holds on average over the past three years, but only 35% of its matches have featured a tie break in the last seven years.
Qualifying is still to complete in the Open 13 Provence and as such there are only three main draw matches on the card in Marseille and of these I’m of a mind to take small chance on the underdog in the opening match at (not before) 13:30 UK time.
I said when previewing Richard Gasquet against Gilles Simon in Montpellier that Gasquet was a tempting price after being out injured for months and he duly defeated Simon and then Feli Lopez before his body predictably gave out.
He’s had 10 days off since then and that may well be enough for him to be in a good enough condition to beat Mikael Ymer, who was beaten easily by Filip Krajinovic last week in Rotterdam.
It’s faster than that here in Marseille and Gasquet, who made the semis the last time he played here in 2017, is a tough nut to crack, with only three losses in the last 13 years to players ranked outside the top-50 in main level matches indoors in France.
The last one of those was in September 2017 to Denis Istomin in Metz when Gasquet had only two days prior won the Szczecin Challenger in Poland on clay.
The other two losses were against Robin Soderling and Gilles Muller, so Ymer will be joining a pretty exclusive club if he wins this one on Monday.
Statistically, Ymer has been improving and we took him with a handicap start to beat Karen Khachanov in Melbourne in a match where the slow conditions and durability in defence of Ymer were likely to frustrate the Russian.
It worked out well that day, but Ymer still doesn’t quite do enough on serve to be favourite against Gasquet indoors in France, with the Swede winning only 59.8% of his own service points in his last 10 main level matches on all surfaces.
He’s only held serve 71.7% of the time in those matches and Krajinovic broke him six times in two sets last week from 15 opportunities, so unless the Gasman is not at all fit the Frenchman looks worth the risk here.
Gasquet beat a similarly solid and consistent opponent in Simon last week (and he has a superb record against Simon) as underdog and after months off the tour, so he’s very capable of doing it again here.
If Benoit Paire is in the mood he may not be far from value against the hit and miss Gregoire Barrere in the first of the evening matches in Marseille.
He played very well at the start of the year and he was pretty clear that he wasn’t going to bother much in Pune and he hasn’t won a main draw match in Rotterdam since 2011 (0-6 since then), so he was never likely to stir himself there either.
Paire made the semis here in Marseille in 2016 though and since then he’s had some rough draws: Marin Cilic (then ranked 12) in the 2016 semis; Daniil Medvedev and last year David Goffin.
Paire has won both of their priors and Barrere (who turned 26 on Sunday) has shown improvement of late, but he’s possibly being priced on his narrow win over a poor Grigor Dimitrov two weeks ago.
Finally, our man Marton Fucsovics makes his Marseille debut following the Paire match and like all his matches look likely to be this week it’s far from easy against the unpredictable Alexander Bublik, who has gone well in quick conditions before.
Bublik made the final in Chendgu, which is one of the quicker venues on the tour, only five months ago and this streaky sort is more than capable of going deep this week if he’s in the mood.
The Kazakh’s record indoors isn’t great though, with a 6-9 win/loss mark so far in his main draw career and with a hold/break total of just 95.3.
Fucsovics is some way ahead on that score on 104 and the prices look about right here in what will hopefully be a good start to the week for the Hungarian.
Best Bet
0.5 points win Gasquet to beat Ymer at 2.18
