TUESDAY on week two of the 2018 ATP World Tour features round one and two action from the ASB Classic in Auckland and Sydney International.
And hopefully it’ll be a bit of a better day for us after a dismal performance when Philipp Kohlschreiber lost badly. Thankfully, I didn’t see the Kohlschreiber match live, but by all accounts he was hardly breaking much of a sweat and managed to lose seven games in a row to Daniil Medvedev, which takes some doing.
Turning attention back to Sydney and there are several reasons to believe that Feli Lopez is too short in the betting at a price of around 1.27.
Aleksandar Vukic vs Feliciano Lopez
Lopez has a dismal record here in Sydney, with just three wins from his 12 career matches here, and only one victory since 2005.
Since beating Michael Llodra in a final set tie break in 2005 Lopez has gone 1-9 at Sydney and his outdoor hard court hold/break stats are hardly befitting of a 1.27 favourite either.
The veteran lefty is currently totalling 97.3 (81.4% holds/15.9% breaks) over his 18 main level matches over the last 12 months on outdoor hard and that’s pretty average for a top-50 player.
Last week Lopez was beaten in straight sets by world number 138 Mirza Basic, who Lopez failed to break all match (Basic was comfortably beaten by Guido Pella in the next round).
This week he and partner Marc Lopez were poor in the doubles here in Sydney, losing out to Alex Bolt and Jordan Thompson 1-6, 3-6 in a bad result for the Spanish pair.
So, things aren’t going well for Lopez and his struggles at this tournament may well continue with keen as mustard local hope Vukic aiming to defeat the 36-year-old at around 02:00 UK time on Court 1.
Vukic lives just around the corner and so far he’s shown that he performs very well at his home tournament with very good qualifying wins over Ricardas Berankis and Dusan Lajovic – both in straight sets.
The Aussie was only broken once in total in those two matches and he posted some excellent numbers on serve, which suggests the weak returning Lopez may well struggle to break Vukic too.
Vukic also showed up well in Sydney last year when he beat another net-rushing sort in Sergiy Stakhovsky and the Ukranian only managed to break Vukic twice in three sets.
It’s worth considering the +3.5 games on Vukic at 1.90 or the outright win at 3.80 in this one.
Best Bet
- 1.5 points win Vukic +3.5 games to beat Lopez
- (1.90, Unibet)
Freelance tennis writer & broadcaster. 2017: Unibet tennis betting columnist. West Brom fan; Red Bull web editor; Lagen's dad; & a keen blocker of idiots.
