There are just three clay tournaments this week on the ATP Tour, all at the lower 250 level, as players continue their preparations for the French Open and the May Experts events. Our tennis columnist, Dan Weston, looks at which players have the capacity for an adequate week…
A week’s break for Nadal gives the rest of the tour a chance The tennis tour gets away with the Spaniard beating Stefanos Tsitsipas at the final of Barcelona yesterday afternoon without even dropping a set to make it two championships in two weeks, by the Rafa Nadal juggernaut. In fact, this now makes it 46 sets that he has won in a row on his favorite surface, and his return data, where he’s broken opponents almost 50% on clay in the previous 12 months, and created an unprecedented 1.04 break point chances per match, far virtually anything that some of his rivals could offer.
A feeble field greets Cilic and Bedene at Istanbul
Certainly, in the low-profile occasions this week, there are no players near the level, and action will get underway at 10:00 UK time this morning in Istanbul the seeds with byes. Of them, Seppi (despite decent results of late) and Dzumhur don’t have impressive data, with Cilic and the Budapest semi-finalist, Bedene, having much better numbers.
Requirements in Turkey are likely to be medium-slow, with 75.7percent of support games held in the previous three decades (1.4% under the 77.1percent ATP clay mean in this time period), providing slight bias towards the return-orientated players at the draw. Taking a look at the unseeded players with potential for a good run, there really isn’t an abundance of gift, or many with over 100% combined hold/break percentage on clay in the previous 12 months, together with all the out-of-form Viktor Troicki along with the Brazilian, Rogerio Dutra Da Silva, being the very best of a poor bunch.
Both are in the third quarter of Bedene, but the Slovenian is going to be a strong favourite against this duo. Chances not in excess of money don’t inspire although cilic includes a gift draw in the upper half of the draw. Bedene at about 7/1 is generous, although the duo of Dutra and Troicki Da Silva at round the 25/1 mark may be of interest to your readers.
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