MAY 28: FRENCH OPEN TENNIS TIPS

THE rain is set to fall at Roland Garros on Tuesday but we're hopeful of some play.

The insanity continued in Paris on Monday, where a string of highly unlikely occurrences came to pass on a bizarre day at Roland Garros.

First, Rafa Nadal dropped the opening set of his tournament and almost the second to Daniel Brands – a man who managed to take one game from Jan Hajek last week at home in Germany.

In fairness I did say the best bet in that one was for Brands to take the match over 26.5 total games but I wasn't expecting them to be 27 games in by the start of set three.

Then Robin Haase finally won a tiebreak after losing the previous 17 and to cap it all John Isner added his name to the list of players in round two to join other Americans Sam Querrey and Ryan Harrison.

Furthermore, Juan Monaco lost from two sets up against a supposedly injured Daniel Gimeno Traver and Gael Monfils knocked out Tomas Berdych in a marathon five-setter.

Madness! And I may have some time to reflect on it all today as the weather looks very dicey for the next few days and most of the week in Paris.

At least one of my five potential first-round upsets was a winner with the Monfils victory and the final two play today with Janko Tipsarevic and Ivan Dodig both looking shaky favourites.

If we do get some play I'm looking forward to seeing how highly-rated young Czech player Jiri Vesely gets on against Philipp Kohlschreiber at around lunchtime today. The 19-year-old left hander has beaten some decent opposition in Challengers and qualifying and as we saw yesterday with Nick Kyrgios an upset is not beyond the realms of possibility.

I'll be laying the German, who has lost to Querrey and Leo Mayer here the last two years, at around 2.26 for the 3-0 win, as he's coming off the back off a poor effort in Dusseldorf and a withdrawal in Rome.

Florian Mayer is an injury doubt for his match with Denis Istomin and in any case he has an awful record here in Paris having never bettered the second round and with questionable fitness the 2.54 on Istomin is worth taking – we may get a retirement in that one.

Alex Dolgopolov is surely a lay at 1.26, which is a price that must be assuming Dmitry Tursunov to perform as badly on clay as he has in years gone by, but the Russian has beaten David Ferrer on clay this year and pushed Dolgo to two tie breaks in Munich recently, so I'm not sure where 1.26 comes from.

Dolgo lost to Sergiy Stakhovsky in the first round here last year and Viktor Troicki the year before, so laying Dolgo 3-0 at 2.44 looks the call.

So, if we do get some play there are plenty of options to go at today with these and my remaining potential first-round upsets.

Recommended Bets

Lay Kohlschreiber 3-0 at 2.26 vs Vesely
Back Istomin at 2.54 to beat Mayer
Lay Dolgopolov 3-0 at 2.44 to beat Tursunov

Already advised

Lay or back to lay Tipsarevic at 1.22 against Mahut
Back Pella to beat Dodig at 2.7

Milesey (Betfair)

🔗 Share on Social Media