With five of the six World's top players missing at the Cincinnati Masters 1000 Series last week, new World number one Nadal and two time Masters Series winner this season Zverev failing to make an impression it left the event wide open to witness a new winner and potentially first time Masters Series finalists and winners. At the time of writing seventh seed Dimitrov and the unseeded and bad boy of tennis Kyrgios were the two players to capitalise on the much weaker draw and they were set to fight it out for their first ever Masters Series title.
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, USA. 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). The top seed has a poor record at Winston Salem winning none of the last six titles and they have never been a losing finalist in this period, which does not bode well for top-seed Bautista Agut's chances this week.
The second seed has not performed much better winning one of the last six titles (Anderson 2015), but they were a losing finalist twice in this period (last Bautista Agut 2016). Seeded players have a strong record; a player seeded no higher than nine has won the last six titles and they were a losing finalist three times in this period (last 2016). An unseeded player has never won the title, but they were a losing finalist three times over the last six seasons (last Hebrert 2015).
From a betting perspective its worth going for a couple of seeded players considering they have a strong record and tenth seed Sugita (33/1) and 15th seed Medvedev (22/1) both fit the bill as they've been in decent form during the summer. As unseeded players have a reasonable record at Winstom Salem its worth mentioning a couple that may go well at big prices. Dolgopolov (18/1) has been in good form this year producing his best tennis in a long time and he has the game and experience to challenge for the title this week. Britain's Kyle Edmunds had to come through qualifying this week, but carrying this winning momentum in to the main draw should play to his advantage, and he's more than capable of winning a tournament of this nature (price tbc).
