A very poor day on serve from Quentin Halys got us off to a bad start in Paris, as the big serving Frenchman just couldn’t get anywhere near enough first serves in play to really bother Kei Nishikori on Sunday.
Halys was down around the 37% mark for most of the match and that was never going to be enough for him to have a chance against a top-10 player – even one as out of form as Nishikori – but he still led by a break twice in set three before the serve let him down again.
The overs was successful for anyone who took that in the matches involving Grigor Dimitrov and Diego Schwartzman, but rather embarrassingly, Ricardas Berankis got bagelled by David Goffin in their opening set, as Goffin turned in one of his occasional fine performances.
It was a typical French Open day, really: one underdog winner (Popyrin may have been slight underdog in the end) and a pretty unforeseeable one at that in Nicolas Mahut from two sets down against Marco Cecchinato.
We’ve 28 matches to consider on day two and the weather for the day is expected to be dry, cloudy, a little windy (20kph) and around 20C.
Among the underdogs that have some sort of opportunity today in my view are: Peter Gojowczyk, Marius Copil, Pierre-Hugues Herbert, Frances Tiafoe, Sergiy Stakhovsky and Jeremy Chardy, but most are tentative picks, in all honesty.
Marius Copil gets in there purely because of the fast turnaround that Benoit Paire has from Saturday’s Lyon final and the questionable condition of Paire’s back.
Frances Tiafoe tends to show up better at the big tournaments or big matches and at main level on clay there’s very little to separate him from Filip Krajinovic, so Tiafoe gets on the ‘possible’ list as underdog.
Pierre-Hugues Herbert has improved considerably on clay in the last year and he faces an opponent in Daniil Medvedev who perhaps isn’t fully fit after a groin injury led to a back problem in Rome and he then withdrew from Geneva.
Medvedev is yet to win a match at the French Open and while he began the clay swing surprisingly well he could be challenged by Herbert if the latter serves well.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga vs Peter Gojowczyk
We’ll see what 34-year-old Tsonga has left in the tank over the best of five sets on clay in this third match of the day on Lenglen at around 14:00 or so UK time on Monday.
Injuries have taken their toll on the big man in recent times and his clay swing so far has seen him lose to Filip Horansky, Nikoloz Basilashvili and Taylor Fritz (retirement) as well as Fabio Fognini and Benoit Paire.
In Lyon last week he wasn’t far off a straight sets loss to Steven Diez, who converted just three of 15 break point chances, and then he was beaten in two by Basilashvili.
Prior to that Horansky beat him in the Bordeaux Challenger, prompting Tsonga to withdraw from Madrid for ‘non-medical reasons,’ which was interpreted in France as his form not being good enough to compete.
We’ll probably see a full effort from Tsonga here, but his last visit to the French Open a couple of years ago saw him lose as a 1.03 chance to Renzo Olivo, and for me he has a lot to prove on his weakest surface these days.
His last 10 main level matches on clay have produced a service hold/break total of just 98.3, which isn’t a great deal better than the 95.4 of Gojowczyk, and it’s Gojowczyk that’s won more points on first serve and second serve and created more break chances in those 10 matches each.
And it’s the German that has won both of their prior career clashes – both in France.
One was an epic five set win when Tsonga was again a 1.03 chance in Davis Cup in 2014 and the other when Tsonga was coming back from injury (again) towards the end of last season.
Both were on indoor hard and it’s fair to say that Gojowczyk finds clay a bit slow, but he can move well on it and play on it if he’s feeling confident, as he showed a year ago when reaching the Geneva final.
These two flat hitters will be playing a hard court match on clay here and on current form Tsonga looks very short, presumably because he’s playing at home, but that didn’t help him much against Olivo, and the +6.5 games on Gojowczyk at 1.80 looks the bet here.
Jeremy Chardy has been known to play well here if the mood takes him and he’s an option against the out of form Kyle Edmund, while I’m also interested to see what Sergiy Stakhovsky can do against Gilles Simon.
The French veteran has been struggling with a back injury for a while now and said after losing to Hugo Dellien in Madrid: “I do not know what to do. By taking breaks, I am out of shape. My body is very bad. It's hard right now. It's really painful to play at the moment because I'm doing a lot of work and I cannot get fit.”
His 5-0 career record against Stakho (from years ago, mainly,) and the idea that the latter can’t play on clay has made Simon a 1.15 shot here and that gives us a chance to take Gillou on in some way.
Simon has won just two of his last 12 matches at the French in straight sets, while Stakho tends to raise his game in big matches at majors, even on clay, and he should be very much up for this as a lucky loser.
The Ukrainian with a +7.5 game start looks the wager in this one or the over 39.5 games at 3.55 for a bigger-priced bet.
Best Bets
0.5 points win Gojowczyk +6.5 games to beat Tsonga at 1.80
0.5 points win Stakhovsky +7.5 games to beat Simon at 1.79
