A poor serving day from Leonardo Mayer – possibly due to the injury that he mentioned on Saturday – prevented the Argentine from pressing an impressive Roger Federer on Sunday.
Mayer made only 44% of first serves in the first two sets against Federer and that was after making 60% in his first three matches and without that weapon he didn’t stand much chance against the Swiss, and the wind didn’t help either.
It looks like the mini-heatwave that Paris has had in the last few days is at an end, with showers forecast for Monday and temperatures back down at around 19C for day nine of the French Open.
We start on Suzanne Lenglen Court with an intriguing affair between two M1000 champions on the clay who are yet to make their mark at slam level.
Fabio Fognini vs Alexander Zverev
On form we have to strongly fancy Fognini here, with the Italian perhaps finally ready to go deep at the clay major (only one quarter final appearance thus far in his career and it was a non-appearance) at the age of 32.
The Italian’s success in very similar conditions in Monte-Carlo recently has surely boosted his belief that he can go further in majors and on the way to that title he defeated Zverev pretty comfortably in two sets.
In terms of their respective service hold/break stats over the last 12 months on clay at main level there isn’t a great deal between the pair (hence the close pricing) with Fognini just ahead on 106.2 against 105.2, but the more interesting stat is second serve points won.
Zverev has noticeably been struggling with his game lately and that shows up clearly in his weak 42.4% second serve points won count.
That’s by five percent the weakest number of second serve points won of anyone left in the tournament and other than a cosy win over the underpowered Mikael Ymer most things have been a struggle for the German this clay swing.
And it was so again in the last round when he edged past Dusan Lajovic in a fifth set, winning just one more point in the match and again only 33% of his second serve points won.
Playing that poorly from the back of the court leaves him under big pressure to serve well and on this form it’s hard to see Zverev taking down Fognini – but as is often the case with Fabio, there’s a caveat.
He’s been struggling with injury on and off for a while and again had treatment for an ankle or calf issue in his previous round here against Roberto Bautista Agut.
Of that Fabio said: “Right now I'm a little tired and I feel a little pain, I hope to recover well tomorrow [Sunday] but I do not think it is anything serious.”
In this situation where the odds are about even and you fancy one a fair bit more than the other I often think it’s worth pushing the boat out a little and one point on the -1.5 sets on Fognini at 2.30 looks the bet.
Elsewhere, it’s often tempting to take a chance on Gael Monfils when he’s in what appears to be a fairly professional frame of mind and at 2.90 against Dominic Thiem he’ll be in many people’s thoughts, I’m sure.
But he’s not by any means a prolific underdog winner, with one win in his last 10 matches (since July 2016) when he’s been priced up as a 2.80 dog or bigger and the last time he did it at a major was here in Paris in 2013 in a final set against Tomas Berdych.
Added to that it doesn’t look the best of match-ups for Monfils, who’s only held serve 65% of the time on all surfaces against Thiem in a series in which he’s lost four of five matches.
Gael’s natural inclination to be passive and reactive hands the initiative away and the elite players usually don’t let it go, with Monfils winning only two of his last 21 against top-five ranked opposition.
It’ll quite possibly be another in the Monfils series of narrow losses against the top-five and backing Lamonf here is not for me.
I’d actually prefer taking the overs in the opening match on Chatrier, which is Novak Djokovic versus Jan-Lennard Struff, with the German – if he’s not too fatigued – likely to present a decent challenge for the Serb on current form.
The obvious problem for Struff here is recovering from a very long and mentally draining five setter against Borna Coric in the last round in which he was close to going out, but his form has been very good lately.
Even against the current top-25 his second serve has been holding up well, with Struff winning 53% of the points on his second delivery in his nine matches in the last 12 months (5-4 win/loss) on clay.
If he has anything left in his legs the over 29.5 games looks worth thinking about here.
Finally, our man Juan Martin Del Potro is still plugging away with his dodgy knee, and it’s hard to tell exactly what sort of shape Delpo is actually in.
It didn’t look good at all against Yoshihito Nishioka early on, but maybe it wasn’t as bad as it appeared and the Tower of Tandil’s on-court body language is hardly the most positive at times, so perhaps he’s OK.
It makes his matches impossible to bet on right now, but if he is fit I’d expect Delpo’s game to be too much for Karen Khachanov on most surfaces.
Delpo has held 96% of the time in his hard court series against Khachanov, but if he’s unable to play to his strengths due to injury it’s anyone’s guess as to the outcome of this one.
Best Bets
1 point win Fognini -1.5 sets to beat Zverev at 2.50
