The end of this week sees the start of the English domestic football season, and there are ATP tennis tournaments in Washington, Los Cabos, and Kitzbuhel kicking off shortly. Betting on football played on a Monday at this stage of a season is likely to be very unreliable so we will start the week as we ended it, focussing (and hopefully winning) on the tennis.
Remember that a Lucky 15 combines four singles bets into one four-fold accumulator, four trebles, six doubles, and the four singles, maximising your chances of winning. The bet stays alive as long as one selection wins.
Obviously, we hope for better than that and last week we hit three out of four on Friday for a nice return, and ended up with two out of three on Saturday after Philipp Kohlschreiber retired.
Here are today’s bets:
- Alexandr Dolgopolov to beat Thomaz Belluci at around 4/9
- Sebastian Ofner to beat Nikolaz Basilashvili at around 12/5
- Nicolas Mahut to beat Thomas Fabbiano at around 10/11
- Jared Donaldson v Dudi Sela – more than 2.5 sets at around 11/8
Alexandr Dolgopolov to beat Thomaz Belluci
Thomaz Belluci’s form is in freefall at the moment, and although these players are separated by one ranking place, Dolgopolov is an easy favourite to win and an obvious tip. Both enjoy playing on the clay, but at the moment, Belluci may not be enjoying playing anywhere. Belluci hasn’t won a match in his last five tournaments and although Dolgopolov took a first-round loss last week, prior to that he reached the final in Bastad, proving he is definitely over the injury that saw him retire against Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon. He also leads the head to head 3-0.
Sebastian Ofner to beat Nikolaz Basilashvili
We are going for an upset here – of sorts. Ofner is a young up and coming Austrian who is playing at home in Kitzbuhel. He took out Thomaz Belluci and Jack Sock at Wimbledon before coming up against Alexander Zverev, but is arguably an even better player on clay. This represents a bit of a gamble, but he has the game to win this one, and home support might just give him the edge, especially given his Georgian opponent is coming off the back of two first-round losses in Hamburg and Bastad.
Nicolas Mahut to beat Thomas Fabbiano
We’ve already opposed Thomas Fabbiano once this week and are quite happy to do so again. Although he ranks higher than Mahut, he really isn’t playing the sort of tennis to justify that sort of ranking. He took a first-round loss to Lukas Lacko last week in Atlanta and has been struggling to beat players ranked well below him. Mahut had a little bit of a break after Wimbledon and this is where he starts his US Open build-up. Leading the head to head 2-1, he should be too good for the out-of-form Fabbiano and odds of around 10/11 represent value for me.
Jared Donaldson v Dudi Sela – set betting
These two are incredibly closely matched. Sela ranks five places above Donaldson, both have almost identical win-loss records, and they have never met before. Both reached the second round in Atlanta last week and the third round of Wimbledon before that, both falling to seeds in Grigor Dimitrov and Dominic Thiem respectively. I expect this to be a close game and while Donaldson is favoured – largely due to home advantage, perhaps – I see more value in backing more than 2.5 sets at odds against as this may well go the distance.