The ATP 250 action at Nice and Geneva is now well underway and four of my five outright selections this week are all still in with a chance of reaching Sunday’s final. At Nice fifth seed Joao Sousa (22/1) is through to the quarter-finals and he will play third seed Kevin Anderson for the first time tomorrow.
At Geneva all three outright selections have won their first two matches; Carreno-Busta (28/1) is through to the quarter-finals and will face top-seed Stan Wawrinka, who thrashed Ramos-Vinolas 6-1 6-1 in his opening match.
Carreno-Busta and Wawrinka have met once before on the ATP Tour back in 2013 on clay at Estoril, where Wawrinka won 6-3 3-6 6-1. With this being Carreno-Busta’s toughest match on paper I would suggest backing the Over Games line, which should be around 20.5 or 21.5 games, to cover your outright stake as he’s more than capable of taking a set off Wawrinka again.
My other two outright selections at Geneva Kuznetsov (25/1) and Bellucci (20/1) are both through to the second round and are capable for winning their respective matches against Steve Johnson and Frederico Delbonis today. Kuznetsov has never played Johnson before and the layers have chalked him up as the clear favourite at 4/9, while Bellucci has been priced up the marginal favourite at Evens to beat Delbonis, who he’s won three of his last four matches against, all on clay.
From a match betting perspective there are a few selections I like tomorrow. Firstly I think Leonardo Mayer is over priced at 5/2 against Dominic Thiem. Three of their four matches, including last year’s final here, where very close and the other Mayer won in straight sets at Hamburg on clay.
Mayer has the advantage of a competitive match under his belt already and I have the feeling Thiem may be more concerned with saving his energy for the French Open next week, rather than defending his title this year and with that in mind I advise either laying Thiem at 1.3 or backing Mayer at 5/2.
I also think the match between Thiem and Mayer and Delbonis and Bellucci will be close and suggest backing the Over 22.5 games double at 3.7, as three of the four matches between Thiem and Mayer and four of the six matches between Delbonis and Bellucci landed this bet.
