World number two, 2016 Wimbledon and Olympic champion Andy Murray continued his brilliant form at Cincinnati this week and at the time of writing was through to tonight’s final where he will face 12th seed Marin Cilic who he has an 11-2 head-to-head winning record against. Murray is currently on a 22 match unbeaten run that stretches back to the start of Queens back in June and if he wins the Cincinnati he will have won the last four tournaments he has entered, which bodes well for his chances of winning a second US Open title that commences a week tomorrow.

Before the final Grand Slam of the season the US Open gets underway next week there is one ATP hard court tournament to contest at Winston Salem, North Carolina USA that gets underway this evening at 21.30 GMT. The tournament has been running since 2011 and has been won by experienced big servers like Isner (2011 and 2012), Melzer (2013), Rosol (2014 and Anderson (2015) who is the defending champion this week. The top seed has a poor record at Winston Salem winning none of the last five titles and they have never been a losing finalist in this period, which does not bode well for top-seed Richard Gasquet’s chances this week.

The second seed has performed better winning one of the last five titles (Anderson 2015) and they were a losing finalist once in this period (2012). A seeded player no higher than nine has won the last five titles, they were a losing finalist twice in this period (2012 and 2013) and unseeded players have never won the title in this period, but they were a losing finalist three times, including the last two seasons.

Sam Querrey (20/1) seeded six have performed well at Winston Salem in the past. He is a three time semi-finalist (2012, 2013 and 2014), has been in solid form this year, and performs well on home soil and won Delray Beach on hard courts earlier in the season and with this in mind is worth backing to win the title this week. Defending champion Kevin Anderson (8/1) should also go well this week as he will need to defend the ranking points he won here last year and showed signs of a return to form reaching the fourth round at Cincinnati last week (lost to Murray).