Tennis Betting Advice - May 2018
French Open: Bets of the Day – 25/1 and 66/1 picks…
Wednesday 30th May 2018
In your Ones to Watch email today:
French Open – Bets of the Day
Good morning and welcome to Day 4 of your French Open 2018 coverage…
Play starts from 10am UK time.
Survival instincts…
Our 50/1 pick Elise Mertens completed her delayed 1st Round match yesterday, finishing off the final set with a comfortable 6-0 ‘bagel.’ On Monday evening Mertens had been just one game from defeat, with her opponent serving for the match in the second set.
Such is the tennis scoring system and the nature of the game…
Petra Kvitova – our 14/1 Women’s selection – lost the opening set of her 1st Round match on Monday, but fought back to win, 2-1.
Elsewhere, two-time French Open winner Maria Sharapova came from 0-3 down in the final set to come through her 1st Round match.
And in the Men’s, World No.9 and 8th seed David Goffin came from 2 sets to nil down to win his opener, 3-2. More on him in a moment.
The point being here is that class often shines through in the end. It’s no coincidence that the best players often produce the best comebacks.
And the best players just don’t know when they’re beat. That’s another sign of a real winner. At the Australian Open in January, both of the women’s finalists – runner-up Simona Halep and winner Caroline Wozniacki, the two top-ranked women in the world – both saved match points in dramatic week one matches, before going on to make the final in week two.
Early days…
After three days of the French Open 2018 it could be said that we’re looking to make something of a comeback ourselves. Just one winner on the board so far – but at the prices we’re betting at, we don’t need much to swing back around to get ahead. And remember we’re still in the early stages of the tournament; in fact due to the rain delays a couple of players including World No.1 Halep are yet to even play their first match.
We had 4 out of 5 winners from our Tuesday acca; the third day in a row where our Match Winner multiple was ‘just one away’ from a 4/1+ payout. Yesterday’s two underdog picks Dudi Sela and Aljaz Bedene were both well beaten, 3-0, but the day before we had a decent win when Guillermo Garcia-Lopez knocked out last year’s French Open runner-up Stan Wawrinka.
Our Each Way picks in the Outright Winner markets are a key part of our tournament betting – so far we have 50/1 Mertens in the top half of the Women’s draw and 14/1 Kvitova in the bottom half…
Today’s the day for us to get involved in the Men’s draw.
Day 4…
The 1st Round should finally get completed today, along with the start of the 2nd Round matches. A few showers are forecast again for today and tomorrow, along with the possibility of thunderstorms. The rain will hopefully go away at the weekend though with sunshine currently forecast for the end of the week.
There are over 30 matches on the Day 4 schedule. I’ve been studying the draws, stats, match-ups and prices. Here’s my analysis and our Bets of the Day…
Men’s Outright Winner pick – at 66/1…
As promised, it’s time to look at the Men’s Outright Winner market today.
First things first, in the top half of the draw, reigning champ and record 10-time winner Rafael Nadal leads the field by a mile – currently priced at just 2/5 (1.40) at best. As is often our tactic when looking at a clay court event featuring Rafa, we’re going to start by looking to the Each Way prices on the opposite side of the draw to the World No.1…
One man that stands out for me in the bottom half is David Goffin, available today at 66/1 and 50/1.
Goffin has been on our Ones to Watch lists before and almost made it onto my pre-tournament list this month. An eye injury earlier in the season lead me to decide (no pun intended) to merely keep an eye on the Belgian between then and now…
The good news is Goffin returned to action and after a couple of hiccups a few weeks back he now looks good and ready to challenge for his best ever Roland Garros performance, having previously reached the quarter finals in 2016.
The 27-year-old is a very, very good player – and is truly a ‘best of the rest’ pick outside of the big names here. And considering some of his performances over the last year or so, and the fact that Goffin is now becoming an established Top 10 player, that label could actually be selling him a bit short.
Standing 5’10,” he has a deceptively diminutive physique (he hits the ball much harder than you might think by looking at him). While he might not be in the club of tall, muscle-bound power players that are the trend in the younger ‘Next Gen’ crop of talent, Goffin can really play and has some silky shots, a great temperament and a clear desire to win.
He finished runner-up at the ATP World Tour Finals in November, beating both Roger Federer and Nadal on the indoor hard courts at the O2 Arena in London. While end-of-season fatigue for the big names could take a bit of gloss off those results, it’s still the case that Goffin was fit enough and strong-minded enough to take out both Roger & Rafa.
On clay, Goffin has won more career matches than any on any other surface, and is won 10 lost 4 so far this season. Those 4 defeats all came against players in good form – World No.1 Nadal who is French Open favourite, World No. 3 Alexander Zverev who is the second favourite here, World No.5 Grigor Dimitrov and an improving Kyle Edmund.
In that time the Belgian has made the quarter finals at the Rome and Monte Carlo Masters, and the semi finals in Barcelona.
Goffin is in the 3rd Quarter of the French Open draw which pitches him against potential opponents including Novak Djokovic (12/1), Dimitrov (50/1) and a player on our Ones to Watch list, Pablo Carreno Busta (80/1+).
I rate Goffin’s chances of making a potential quarter final slightly better than Carreno Busta (who I still like by the way), with the Spaniard looking to have a tougher route through the draw and not quite finding his most confident tennis as of yet this clay season.
The 66/1 Belgian can’t meet big names Djokovic or Dimitrov until the quarters and while of course respected, both men are not at their best on clay overall; nor are they in the best of form recently.
In the 4th Quarter there will be casualties, with the young man of the moment Zverev (8/1) seemingly on a collision course with fellow hotly-tipped youngster Dominic Thiem (12/1). Only one of them can make the semis, and there’s plenty of work to do yet before that potential quarter final clash can take place.
All things considered, I like Goffin at outsider prices here. He’s 9/2 (5.50) at best to win the 3rd Quarter but the big Outright Winner prices will give us more to work with if he goes well over the next week. He’s a top price 66/1 with bookies offering 1/3rd odds Each Way, and 50/1 and 40/1 with firms still offering the standard 1/2 odds place terms.
Outright Winner – Men’s:
BET: David Goffin @ 66/1 Each Way
BOOKIES: 66/1 (67.00) Paddy Power, Betfair Sportsbook, 50/1 (51.00) Bet365, 40/1 (41.00) William Hill, Betway, Netbet, 10Bet
Latest odds here
Match Winner picks at 25/1…
I don’t go for accas very often but the early rounds of a Grand Slam give us dozens of matches to work with, and combining selections can produce some nice prices. We’ve come close with our picks so far. Sticking with the big-odds theme today, these 10 players make the cut for me, with the 10-fold coming out around 25/1.
Men:
DAMIR DZUMHUR to beat Radu Albot
Women:
KATERINA SINIAKOVA to beat Kateryna Kozlova
MADISON KEYS to beat Caroline Dolehide
YULIA PUTINTSEVA to beat Jennifer Brady
SLOANE STEPHENS to beat Magdalena Frech
CAMILI GIORGI to beat Marina Duque Marino
CARLA SUAREZ NAVARRO to beat Maria Sakkari
NAOMI OSAKA to beat Zarina Diyas
ANETT KONTAVEIT to beat Alexandra Dulgheru
MIHAELA BUZARNESCU to beat Rebecca Peterson
Match Winner – Acca:
BET: 10-fold on the players above to all win @ 25/1
BOOKIES: 25/1 (26.00) BetVictor, Betway, SunBets, 24/1 (25.00) Bet365, NetBet, 10Bet
Latest odds here
In summary…
Here are today’s Bets of the Day (see above for full details):
10-fold Match Winner acca @ 25/1
Men’s Outright Winner – Goffin @ 66/1 Each Way
See you at 8am tomorrow with your French Open Bets of the Day for Thursday.
Enjoy the tennis…
Best wishes,
Tom Wilson