ATP tennis betting tips: Eastbourne & Antalya

Last week was a frustrating one, make no mistake.

28/1 each-way pick Roberto Bautista Agut made the semi-finals in Halle and was well in his match with Borna Coric when he suffered a nasty fall and duly retired.

This followed both of my Queen’s Club tips, Feliciano Lopez and Kevin Anderson, losing matches in which he held serve throughout.

There’s no choice but to get back on the horse though and, as ever, the week before a Grand Slam provides a good opportunity for some big-priced finalists.

Here are my thoughts on Eastbourne, where Andy Murray continues his comeback, and Antalya.

Nature Valley International

Eastbourne, Great Britain (outdoor grass)

Best bet:

• 1pt e.w. Denis Istomin at 66/1 (Paddy Power, Betfair)

All the talk after Saturday’s draw was about the Andy Murray v Stan Wawrinka first-round match with the winner to face second seed Kyle Edmund.

But from a punter’s perspective, all eyes should have been on the much weaker-looking top half where there looks to be value on offer.

The leading three seeds in this half have won a total of one career match on grass. Top seed Diego Schwartzman is 0-6 on the surface at tour level; Marco Cecchinato lost his only grasscourt match while winning just four games at Wimbledon last season; and Marton Fucsovics is 1-5 lifetime on the green stuff.

Many will instead turn to Gilles Muller, a 12/1 chance. He showed signs of his best form at Queen’s last week when he took out Denis Shapovalov in round one (the Canadian is favourite here in some books) and then pushed eventual finalist Marin Cilic all the way.

However, Muller’s injury issues have been well documented this season and in London he admitted he was having treatment on his elbow problem “twice a day”, adding: “I’m travelling with a physio because otherwise, I think it wouldn’t be possible to play.”

That’s not an encouraging sign for punters, in this week of all weeks. Wimbledon looms next week so this is a time when injury niggles won’t be risked or pushed to the limit. In addition, Muller has a stack of points to defend in SW19 having made the quarter-finals last year.

One other factor against Muller is that this, at the age of 35, will be his debut at Eastbourne where the sea breeze (sometimes gale) can be challenging.

Frankly, I can look elsewhere.

I certainly like Denis Istomin at cracking odds of 66/1.

Unlike Muller, he has plenty of course form having made the semis here in both 2010 and 2014. He also has two other quarter-final showings on his CV, while it is also worth noting that he won the same tournament (in the same week of the calendar) when it was staged in Nottingham in 2015.

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He’d lost eight in a row (excluding a Davis Cup tie against Pakistan) prior to the grass season but a return to the lawns has brought about a real change in fortune.

Istomin beat Philipp Kohlschreiber and Florian Mayer, two men with good grasscourt records, in Stuttgart before losing in the quarter-finals to Lucas Pouille, but only after pushing him to a deciding set.

A dash to Halle saw him beat top seed Gilles Simon in qualifying before a hectic week caught up with him and he lost to Matthias Bachinger.

Still, that loss meant an early trip to England and he should be well set for his first-round clash with Andreas Seppi.

Seppi is admittedly a real danger and he had made my pre-draw shortlist as he is another player with proven course form, the Italian having won the title at Devonshire Park in 2011 and made the final again a year later.

However, that was some time ago now and his recent form is simply not as impressive as Istomin’s.

Seppi leads the pair’s head to head 7-3 but on grass it is 1-1 with both matches having gone to a final set at Wimbledon.

Another tight contest could well be in store but with Istomin’s form stronger and his price more than three times that of Seppi, he gets the vote for an each-way play.

In the first quarter, there looks every chance of a qualifier coming through to the semis given the aforementioned grass records of Schwartzman and Fucsovics.

In the bottom half, Murray could end up making 8/1 quotes look very big indeed but I’m not prepared to risk backing the Scot given the unknowns surrounding him.

Yes, he played better than I, and many others, expected at Queen’s when he only lost 7-5 in the third to Nick Kyrgios.

But given that was his one and only match, we didn’t get to see how he backs up the following day and he may well need to win five matches in as many days this week if he is to triumph. At best the equation is five in six given the scheduled Saturday final.

Murray certainly looked to be feeling it towards the end of his match at Queen’s, no surprise given it was his first for 11 months, and surely some unfashionably hot temperatures forecast for the week won’t help on that score.

An alternative in the section could be rising Aussie star Alex de Minaur, who qualified without losing his serve.

He’s enjoyed plenty of success at Challenger level on grass in the last few weeks, reaching the final in Surbiton before winning the title in Nottingham.

He’s beaten some decent players during that run, including Dan Evans, Matt Ebden and Taylor Fritz, and may be worth a risk if someone is prepared to offer a similar price to that of Istomin. At time of writing none of the qualifiers has been chalked up.

Turkish Airlines Open

Antalya, Turkey (outdoor grass)

Best bets:

• 1pt e.w. Yuichi Sugita at 15/1 (Unibet, 888sport)
• 0.5pt e.w. Mirza Basic at 40/1 (Betfred, totesport, Sky Bet)

Last year’s inaugural tournament in Antalya resulted in one of the weakest fields of the entire ATP season.

This year sees a slight improvement but there are still only two top-30 players in attendance, namely Adrian Mannarino and Damir Dzumhur, while the last direct entry, Marius Copil, is currently ranked 98^th.

That actually makes things rather interesting for punters though and I’m certainly prepared to take on the bookies’ leading fancies, Mannarino and Gael Monfils.

Mannarino did reach the final here 12 months ago which helps explain his short price (7/1, bet365). But the Frenchman lost in the first round of Den Bosch and should have repeated the trick at Queen’s Club last week when Dan Evans failed to win from 5-3 up in the final set, probably only due to a lack of match sharpness following his recently-expired ban.

Mannarino went on to make the last eight, losing only to eventual runner-up Novak Djokovic, but still I don’t like his price this week and the same can be said of Monfils, who is no bigger than 6/1 (Betfred).

Long-term readers of my previews will know I’m never happy to get with Monfils at a short price. Despite being a former top-10 star, one who is closing in on 15 years on the tour, the Frenchman has won just seven titles and four of those have come indoors. None has been on grass, although he did make his first final on this surface last summer in Eastbourne.

In terms of recent form, Monfils has gone just 3-5 since suffering a back injury in Indian Wells.

That was just the latest in a long line of physical ailments and again the week before a Grand Slam is surely not a good one to be placing any trust in Monfils’ fitness.

Both Mannarino and Monfils are in the top half and I’m going to take them on with Mirza Basic, a 40/1 shot.

Basic stormed to his first ATP title indoors in Sofia in February where he used his strong serve to good effect.

The Bosnian’s main weapon should help him on the grass this week too and there were signs of that being the case when he played Milos Raonic in Stuttgart. He lost that first-round match but not before missing set points in the opener which lost 10-8 in the tie-break.

He’s rarely played on grass but the raw tools are there to do a job and if it’s going to happen for Basic on this surface then this week looks as good an opportunity as any.

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Leaping down to the bottom half, defending champion Yuichi Sugita is back for more and I like his chances at 15/1.

I picked out Sugita in Den Bosch a couple of weeks ago only for the Japanese to lose from a position of strength in round two.

He’s since made the quarter-finals in Halle, beating top seed Dominic Thiem, so I’m a tad surprised to see him offered at 15/1 in Antalya, where he’s proven himself before.

He dealt with some brutal heat in Turkey 12 months ago although thankfully a repeat of 40C temperatures is not expected by forecasters.

There doesn’t look an awful lot to beat with Fernando Verdasco arguably holding the best chance of stopping Sugita.

I remember backing Verdasco here last season only for him to flop against Mannarino. With a first-round bye, the Spaniard has only four matches to win and it wouldn’t be too difficult to highlight the same reasons why he could win.

But his form does little suggest he’s someone to trust at 10/1 so I’ll pass on this occasion and take Sugita to go back-to-back at the event, one which actually got under way on Sunday with two main-draw matches.

However, they have not had a major effect on the outright markets.

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