Tennis Betting Advice - October 2020
French Open: Hunting for upsets on Day 6…
Friday 2nd October 2020
In your Ones to Watch email today:
Welcome to Day 6 of the French Open…
Eight in the book…
The 3rd round starts today. There are 64 players left in the tournament. We’re on eight of them at attractive Each Way prices.
The names in our Outright Winner book are:
(Originally advised odds in brackets)
Men’s
Women’s
So far, the biggest price drops have come in the women’s market…
Teenager Swiatek was flagged up at as big as 80/1 and 100/1 in places, pre-tournament. After two good wins in the early rounds, and with the likes of Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka knocked out her side of the draw, the exciting Polish youngster is now trading at 16/1 – 22/1.
In the bottom half, 2nd seed Karolina Pliskova was knocked out yesterday. A result that has contributed to the bookies trimming the odds on our two women in that section. Ferro and Kenin are now 25/1 each, having been 50/1+ and 33/1+ before Thursday’s matches.
In the 3rd Round today…
Five of our picks are in action on Day 6…
Wawrinka and Sinner are priced at short odds-on to win their matches. Sinner is 1/6 (1.17) to beat Federico Coria. Stan is just 1/20 (1.05) to beat Hugo Gaston.
I like this confident quote from Wawrinka this week:
“The current conditions are an advantage for me. Slow and heavy, it’s good for my game. I have enough power to put weight on each ball. I know that if I play well, I can beat everybody”
Ruud has one of the toughest clay-court assignments in the game today. Our 21-year-old Norwegian one to watch takes on two-time French Open runner-up, Dominic Thiem, who has a 75% career match win rate on clay.
In years to come, Ruud could be spoken of in the same breath as Thiem. Right now, though, it’s David v Goliath on the odds. The underdog is 6/1 (7.0). The favourite is 1/10 (1.1).
The 27-year-old Austrian is 4/1 to win the tournament. Ruud is 150/1. We’re very much in outsider territory here. But if a coming-of-age result does occur, then the upside will be most definitely in our favour.
Swiatek v Eugenie Bouchard is an interesting one this morning…
Bouchard was a Ones to Watch regular when she first made it on the scene, reaching the Wimbledon final at 50/1 back in 2014. Since then, there has been very little to cheer in the Canadian’s results.
Genie has shown greater focus and improved performances of late though. Reaching the Istanbul final last month when priced at 50/1, finishing runner-up. Some seven years her junior, Swiatek is the breakthrough player right now. The bookies make the teenager an 8/15 (1.53) favourite to win today.
Pironkova takes on Barbora Krejcikova. The bookies make this one 50-50, with our crafty player at 10/11 (1.91), and the Czech clay-courter at Evens (2.0).
Hunting for upsets…
Elsewhere on the Friday schedule, and talking of 50-50 matches, the bookmakers can’t pick at all between Anna Karolina Schmiedlova and Nadia Podoroska.
Schmiedlova has reached the 3rd round by taking two big scalps, with straight-sets wins over both Venus Williams and Victoria Azarenka. Podoroska meanwhile is riding a 10-match winning streak on clay. That includes a trio of wins in French Open qualifying last week, and a lower-tier, ITF tournament win before that. Should be a good match.
On the upset front, Amanda Anisimova will have plenty of backers against no.1 seed Simona Halep today…
The teenager shocked Halep here at Roland Garros last year. The odds that day were 4/1. It’s the same price for a repeat today. I wouldn’t rule it out.
Although I would note that Halep is a wily competitor, and will be coming into this with an iron will not to lose to the youngster again. Add in the nerves that often crop up in Amanda’s game, and I’ve got this match down as one to watch on TV, rather than to get financially involved in.
One women’s match where I do like the upset potential is Carolina Garcia v Elise Mertens…
Garcia made the quarter finals in Paris in 2017, but in general, the Frenchwoman has tended to wilt somewhat under the pressure of playing in front of a demanding home crowd. There are no packed stadiums at Roland Garros in 2020 though, and it’s worth noting that a few French players have been doing well so far in these quiet new surroundings.
Caroline has recorded wins over two very good opponents so far. Beating Anett Kontaveit 2-1, then taking out Aliaksandra Sasnovich, 2-0.
Add in the fact that the matchday favourite Mertens has only once been past this stage of the French Open, and Garcia leads the head-to-head by two wins to nil (hard courts, 2017 and 2019). And the case for the upset at odds of 5/2 (3.5) is a decent one.
In the men’s, Alexander Zverev continues to win while not playing particularly well. He really could and perhaps should have been beaten by Pierre-Hugues Herbert in the last round (another French player raising their game). Zverev eventually came through, but it needed the full five sets, and he had to come from behind after losing the first set.
Today’s opponent Marco Cecchinato made the semi finals here in 2018. The Italian is well at home on clay. Of his 437 career match wins, 377 have come on the red dirt (86%). Having come through qualifying last week, and also at Rome before that, Marco has won nine of his last 10 matches.
Plenty of money has come for the 2/1 (3.0) match upset today. Zverev has a good knack of digging in and finding a way to get the job done though, as his recent run to the US Open final demonstrated.
I prefer odds of 6/4 (2.5) for Cecchinato to make the better start and win the first set. Zverev has lost the opening set in three of his last five Grand Slam matches in the past month, and was also 5-2 down in set one in his 1st round match this week.
Ones to Watch:
Caroline Garcia v Elise Mertens
Alexander Zverev v Marco Cecchinato
Play starts from 10am and runs throughout the day.
You can watch the French Open live on the Eurosport channels, website & app. On selected bookie websites with a funded account. And on ITV4.
I’ll be back tomorrow morning with your Day 7 email.
Enjoy the tennis…
Best wishes,
Tom Wilson