3rd Round – Bernard Tomic vs Richard Gasquet
Third round matches continue at the US Open this evening and whilst our winning run came to an end last night, as Sergiy Stakhovsky imploded from 5-5 in the second set after missing an easy volley, we are looking to get immediately back on track with a successful handicap betting recommendation in tonight’s matches.
In one of the early 4pm UK time starts, Bernard Tomic takes on Richard Gasquet and I like the chances of the Australian bad-boy to keep this close. Tomic has come through for us recently on hard court in a match with Marin Cilic in Montreal last month, with the market under-estimating his ability against high-ranked players on his favourite surface.
This is shown by Tomic’s strong hold/break stats on hard court, where he has won an impressive 26/37 matches in the last 12 months, holding serve 86.1% and breaking opponents 20.4% (combined 106.5%). This is solid top 15 form on the surface, although perhaps some may argue that his stats flatter him a little due to the mediocre average opponent quality.
Gasquet’s stats on the surface are actually worse. The Frenchman has won just 16/26 on hard court in the same time period, holding 83.1% and breaking 21.9% (combined 105.0%), albeit against arguably better opponents.
With adjustments made for opponent quality, the data above combined to generate a model price of 1.61 on the Frenchman, which is significantly bigger than the 1.25 available currently in the market.
On this basis, there is severe value on Tomic, which is probably also helped by Gasquet’s 5-1 head to head lead influencing the market. This is a good example of when a head to head record should be taken with a large pinch of salt, with Tomic at a much better place in his career both rankings-wise (a career high of 24) and statistically, from the hold/break stats than when he played those head to head matches. In addition to this, the head to head matches feature a number of tiebreak wins for Gasquet, which could easily have gone the other way, particularly as both players’ recent tiebreak records are virtually identical.
With a decent sized sample of historical data difficult to come by in Grand Slams, I’m just going to stick with a simple recommendation. With a model price of 2.64 to win the actual match, there is no way that the 1.63 on Tomic to win just one set can be ignored.
Tennis Handicap Betting Recommendation: Bernard Tomic +2.5 sets at 1.63
Prices correct at the time of writing
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