My usual moan to kick things off as last week was further cause for regret and what might have been.
Big prices about Roberto Bautista Agut were snapped up only for the Spaniard to withdraw from Toronto prior to hitting a ball (hopefully you got your money back). The tip who did make it onto court might not have bothered as Kei Nishikori suffered a miserable defeat to Robin Haase – a player I’d tipped in each of the two previous weeks when he failed to win a match.
To make matters worse, Stefanos Tsitsipas, my each-way tip from Washington who lost in the semis there, produced a career-best week to reach the final, beating the likes of Djokovic, Thiem and Zverev along the way. A week too late, I’m afraid!
Still, I guess it shows I was on the right track so without further ado, let’s crack on to this week.
Western and Southern Open
Cincinnati, USA (outdoor hard)
Best bets:
- 3pts win Roger Federer at 9/2 (Sky Bet)
- 1pt e.w. Marin Cilic at 16/1 (various)
- 0.5pt e.w. Borna Coric at 100/1 (Betfred, totesport)
Roger Federer likes Cincinnati – he’s won here seven times before and at 9/2 he’s a tasty price to make it eight.
The Swiss has missed the event in each of the last two years due to injury but he has won it on three of his last four visits, twice without losing a set.
The conditions are pretty quick which aids Federer’s game and I’d expect him to be controlling matches with his serve over the next week.
He’s playing for the first time since Wimbledon where he suffered a shock quarter-final loss to Kevin Anderson when another title looked a strong possibility.
He may have turned 37 on Wednesday but there was nothing in that Anderson match to concern me relating to that. In any case, they are back over best-of-three this week and Federer, as second seed, also has a first-round bye.
Some may have doubts after Federer lost that Anderson battle from match point up – he was one good return away from victory in the third set before losing 13-11 in the fifth.
Yet Federer did not fade as the match wore into a fifth hour and in fact he was the better player for much of the decider, but despite getting into several of the South African’s service games he couldn’t put him away and finally cracked himself.
The loss could change tennis history quite a bit – we wouldn’t have had Isner v Anderson two days later and therefore probably not the debate which now seems likely to see final-set tie-breaks of some sort introduced at Wimbledon.
Essentially, Federer played very well at Wimbledon but a quirk of fate saw him beaten. He would have won that match on many other days.
Perhaps the loss is a good thing for his backers this week.
I suspect for him to meet his season goals he’ll now really need to win the US Open and, having opted out of last week’s Masters 1000 tournament in Toronto, this is his only prep for that.
Expect focus; indeed his draw may require it.
That said, although much was made of the fact that Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka and Kei Nishikori all landed in his quarter as unseeded players, the fact is Federer would start a pretty hot favourite against any of them. And rightly so.
Still in the early stages of his comeback, Murray, who has lost his last five matches and last 11 sets against Federer, showed great fight in Washington but didn’t face anyone of the Swiss’ class, while Wawrinka has been largely poor since making a return from injury of his own.
As mentioned above, Nishikori was woeful last week in Toronto and so to me this looks a quarter from which Federer really should emerge – Dominic Thiem is the man he’s seeded to face in the quarter-finals but the Austrian is unlikely to thrive in such slick conditions, and that’s before we mention his play-everywhere schedule which usually begins to take its toll around now.
In the semis, new world number three Juan Martin Del Potro will await if the seedings play out, although the big Argentine pulled out of Toronto with an injury issue having been thumped by Fabio Fognini in the final of Los Cabos a few days earlier.
So perhaps it could be a rematch with Anderson, also in Del Potro’s quarter, for Federer. Revenge would be sweet against a player he had never lost to prior to Wimbledon.
In the opposite half of the draw, the top seed is Rafael Nadal.
However, he is due to play in the final of Toronto at time of writing and I wouldn’t be at all surprised were he to withdraw in a bid to protect himself ahead of the US Open.
Nadal has won here before – in 2013, the year he completed the Canada-Cincy double. He is the only man to achieve that feat in the last 15 years.
The draw has hardly been kind either. Nadal could face Milos Raonic, Kyle Edmund and Novak Djokovic before any semi-final.
With conditions faster than ideal for him, I certainly feel he can be taken on.
Perhaps it will be his long-time rival Djokovic who comes through his section. However, few saw the Wimbledon champion’s defeat to Stefanos Tsitsipas coming in Toronto and it’s definitely worth noting that he’s never won in Cincinnati.
Despite having made five finals, this remains the only Masters 1000 tournament the Serb has not won.
His draw includes a potential third-round meeting with defending champion Grigor Dimitrov, although the Bulgarian suffered a nasty-looking fall in practice on Sunday. Having also made the semis here in 2016, Dimitrov could interest some but personally I’d want to check on his fitness.
I can leave him, Djokovic and Nadal and also Alex Zverev, who got back on downer after becoming another Tsitsipas victim in Toronto. Having played Washington and Toronto back-to-back, I’m not sure the youngster has huge amounts in the tank right now.
Instead I think the best bet in the top half is Marin Cilic.
The conditions are made for his first-strike style of tennis – as he showed here in 2016 when he beat Andy Murray in the final.
Cilic made the last eight in Toronto before losing to Nadal but only after winning the opening set 6-2 so clearly is in decent nick following his post-Wimbledon break.
The Croatian could face John Isner in round three, another player I considered given the conditions. He made the semis last season and was runner-up in 2013.
But Isner has looked below his best in the past few weeks and crucially opens up against Davis Cup team-mate Sam Querrey, a player who has really had his number over the years. Querrey leads their head-to-head 5-2.
Even if Cilic and Isner do meet, the Australian Open finalist will take a 7-3 record into the clash. Zverev could follow in the quarter-finals.
The draw isn’t easy – it’s never going to be at this level – but it could also be a lot tougher and 16/1 about Cilic’s chances looks more than fair. He’s single figures in places.
Finally regular readers know I like a long shot and the man I’ll take a small-stakes shot with this week is Cilic’s compatriot Borna Coric.
The 21-year-old has enjoyed a fine season with a run to the semi-finals on the hardcourts of Indian Wells backed up by reaching the last eight in Miami. He also beat Federer to win the Halle title (on grass) in June.
Coric was back on the hard surface in Toronto last week when he pushed Cilic in three sets before losing. That’s far from a disaster.
Some will suggest it’s a bit too fast for him here but conditions didn’t prevent Coric reaching the last eight in 2016 when he beat both Nadal and Nick Kyrgios before injury forced him to retire against eventual champion Cilic.
Coric could face Kyrgios again in round two this year but the Aussie is currently playing with injury when taking a break would appear, to the layman, to be the thing to do. The same may apply to Del Potro, a possible last-16 foe.
Basically Coric looks big to me at three-figure prices and worth a small punt.
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