ATP Zagreb Quarter Final – Marcel Granollers vs Igor Sijsling
After Wednesday’s successful back at odds against in Quito, a further long-odds proposition looks to be excellent value in this quarter-final clash in Zagreb.
I feel that the market has the odds the wrong way around in this meeting, pricing Granollers at 1.63 and Sijsling at 2.47. However, my model priced Sijsling at 1.65 with Granollers the underdog at 2.54 – making Granollers a false market favourite.
Quite simply, Sijsling has the better 12 month record on hard/indoor hard, by some distance, holding 81.2% to Granollers’ 77.7%, and breaking 23.4% to 16.7% and is a significant contributory factor to this model price.
Furthermore, Sijsling is defending semi-final points in the Rotterdam 500 event next week but is not playing in that event, so should have all the motivation he needs to recoup as many of those points as possible.
Granollers’ supporters will point to the fact that in these matches in the last 12 months. However, whilst the Spaniard has won more (41%) to Sijsling’s 38%, this difference would not begin to significantly alter model prices.
The main reason for this low win percentage is Sijsling’s poor tiebreak record which stands at 5-13 over the last 12 months. Sijsling’s hold/break stats would convert to around a 55-60% win rate on the surface, so he should have a lot of improvement potential in the near future.
In addition, the Dutchman has a great record as an underdog, winning ten of 20 clashes priced between 2.00 and 2.99 in the last 12 months. In those best of three set matches, he’s always won by a minimum of three game margin when he has got the victory (mean 4.67 games) despite only winning four in straight sets, so taking the bigger odds on the Sijsling game handicap makes a lot of sense as opposed to backing him to win in straight sets.
With Sijsling gaining all his wins by at least 3 games backing him to win at 3.10 giving up 2.5 games seems an excellent proposition indeed, and this is today’s recommendation.
Recommendation: Back Igor Sijsling -2.5 games at 3.10.
Price correct at time of writing.
