This week’s ATP tennis action at Marseille, Rio de Janeiro and Delray Beach is now well underway and all of my outright selections are still in action having won their first round matches or start their campaigns today. At Marseille there’s only been one major shock so far this week, which came yesterday when fifth seed and Montpellier winner Alexander Zverev lost his first round match against veteran Mahut. All three of my outright selections at Marseille are still in action and Jan Lennard-Struff (90/1) won his first round match against Chardy yesterday in straight sets and will face either Medvedev or Paire (33/1) for a place in the quarter-finals tomorrow, defending champion and third seed Kyrgios gets his campaign underway today against Jaziri.
At Rio de Janeiro there have been a few upsets already this week, namely third seed Cuevas losing against qualifier de Greef, seventh seed Lorenzi lost against Del Bonis and eighth seed Joao Sousa also lost against qualifier Carbelles-Baena. At the time of writing top-seed Nishikori had lost the first set against Bellucci (advised to oppose Nishikori 1.1 in Monday’s blog). My two outright selections at Rio Carreno-Busta (14/1) and Schwartzman (40/1) are both through to the second round and Carreno-Busta will face either Pella or Estrella Burgos and Schwartzman will face compatriot Del Bonis for a place in the quarter-finals tomorrow.
At Delray Beach second seed Karlovic crashed out against Memphis semi-finalist Young yesterday for the first time in their last three meetings, and Young will now face compatriot Fritz (40/1) for a place in the quarter-finals today/tomorrow. Sixth seed Tomic also lost yesterday against Dzumhur (advised to oppose Tomic 1.5 in Monday’s article) and third seed Sock (11/2) won his opener against Albot yesterday and will now face Garcia-Lopez for a place in the quarter-finals today/tomorrow. Britain’s Kyle Edmund is also through to the second round and will face Lu today for a place in the quarter-finals where he will face either Raonic or Coric.
From a match betting/trading perspective there are a couple of matches I like today that will hopefully return a profit. At Marseille Fourth seed Lucas Pouille’s (1.5) is worth opposing today as his form has been disappointing since injuring an ankle at the start of the year and he may struggle again against Britain’s Aljaz Bedene today. Staying at Marseille second seed Jo Wilfried Tsonga (1.1) is worth opposing today/tomorrow as he may be caught cold today against Marchenko because it’s always notoriously difficult to raise your game after winning a tournament only a few days earlier as Tsonga did at Rotterdam on Sunday.
