This week’s ATP Tennis action at Barcelona and Bucharest is now down to the quarter-final stages and it’s been a good week for backers of my tournament selections, as all three are still in with a shot of reaching Sunday’s finals and winning their respective titles.
Sixth seed Benoit Paire advised at 26/1 (1/2 odds) on Wednesday, will face surprise quarter-finalist Malek Jaziri from Turkey today. On paper Paire should progress to the semi-finals fairly comfortably as he’s hitting form again after a poor start to the year and is by far the superior player on his day.
At Bucharest both our selections this week, sixth seed Guido Pella advised at 14/1 and third seed Frederico Delbonis advised at 4/1, are in action today. Pella faces top-seed Garcia-Lopez, they’ve met once at Buenos Aires this year on clay and Pella won 7-6 6-4. There’s no reason why Pella can’t win again today as he’s playing really well this year, but Garcia-Lopez is the defending champion this week so you may want to consider backing him to cover your outright stake on Pella as a fail-safe.
Delbonis faces world number 99 Marco Cecchinato from Italy and he’s impressed this week knocking out fifth seed Baghdatis and Dzumhur in straight sets. On paper Delbonis should progress without too much drama today as he’s ranked nearly 50 places above the Italian, he’s won ATP Tournaments on the surface whereas Checchinato has only won a few Challenger tournaments during his career so far.
From a match betting perspective this week i’m showing a marginal profit after the last double of Zverev and Pouille won at Evens. There are a few matches that interest me today so I’ll have one final soiree this week and see if I can boost the coffers further.
Rafael Nadal faces 12th seed Fabio Fognini today, who is arguably the one player outside the top-10 who has caused him the most problems in recent seasons. I’m not sure Fognini can repeat last year’s 7-6 6-4 win against Nadal this tournament, but considering six of their last nine matches landed the Over Games line, I suggest following this trend and backing Over 19.5 Games at 10/11.
Robin Haase leads the head-to-head against Fernando Verdasco 3-1, which includes their only meeting on clay at Kiztbuhel. He is ranked over 20 places higher than Verdasco, there’s little between them in terms of their form this year and at 23/10 Haase represents better value and is worth siding with for the win today.
