Tennis betting tips: Paris Masters
1pt Valentin Vacherot to beat Felix Auger-Aliassime at 11/8 (General)
1pt Alex de Minaur to beat Alexander Bublik at 4/5 (betway)
1pt Daniil Medvedev to beat Alex Zverev at 10/11 (bet365)
Sky Bet odds | Paddy Power | Betfair Sportsbook
Valentin Vacherot v Felix Auger-Aliassime (1300 GMT)
Vacherot really is on quite a tear.
After winning the Shanghai Masters as a qualifier, he’s now into the last eight in Paris and has to have a decent chance again here.
Perhaps due to the fact that few of the big guns have ever played him, Vacherot’s serve has been hard to penetrate during his impressive Masters runs, while he’s clearly striking the ball very well from the baseline, seemingly playing without pressure, which is understandable.
In contrast, Auger-Aliassime has everything to play for – he’s still chasing a spot in the ATP Finals – but he’s had to come from a set down in all three of his matches so far.
On Thursday, he walked the tightrope against Daniel Altmaier, who held break point to go 3-2 up in the second set. The German faded, not helped by a physical ailment, in the deciding set, although it’s also fair to say that Auger-Aliassime got to grips with his game the longer the match wore on.
Vacherot described his win over Cam Norrie on the same day as his best of the week and I expect him to be able to trade with FAA from the back of the court. His consistency has been a strong point, not something you can always say about the Canadian.
With the crowd support set to be with the man from Monaco, Vacherot looks a spot of value to me.
Alexander Bublik v Alex de Minaur (to follow)
Both of these men notched impressive victories on Thursday – Bublik seeing off fourth seed Taylor Fritz and De Minaur losing only four games to Karen Khachanov.
The Australian leads their head-to-head 3-1 and it’s 2-0 on hardcourts, albeit one of the wins came via an early retirement.
I suspect Bublik will need a good serving day to prevail. His first serve will win him plenty of cheap points but the first-serve percentage will need to be high as De Minaur should be able to attack the second delivery – he’s won a whopping 65% of points played on Bulbik’s second serve in their previous meetings and broken serve in a highly impressive 40% of the Kazakh’s service games.
Those are worrying stats for those of us on Bublik at 80/1 outright and the slower conditions in Paris this year should also aid De Minaur’s chances.
In a section shorn of top seed Carlos Alcaraz, there is going to be a surprise finalist but looking at how De Minaur has handled Bublik in the past, now might be the time to side with the Aussie at 4/5.
Ben Shelton v Jannik Sinner (not before 1800 GMT)
Sinner didn’t look 100% physically during his win over Francisco Cerundolo on Thursday, regularly stretching out his leg.
Afterwards, he was content with the manner of his performance but one comment stood out. “Hopefully, I can recover physically, which is my main priority,” he said, when looking ahead to this match.
If the Italian does have a niggle, there seems little point in him pushing on in Paris when the ATP Finals in Turin are looming – they start on November 9 – so it wouldn’t be a huge surprise were he to withdraw.
It looks like some want to chance Shelton, who was painting the lines regularly during a good win over Andrey Rublev when his serve was again a major factor. He’s already in from 7/1 to 9/2.
The problem is his miserable record in this match-up.
Sinner has won the last six without losing a set – that’s 15 sets in a row. If he is fully fit, it looks a big ask for Shelton to turn that on its head.
One other stat to note is that all seven previous meetings of these two have featured a tie-break and you can get even money about another occurring here.
Four of the last six have seen the first set go to a breaker and that’s a 23/10 chance.
Both bets look tempting but Sinner’s stretching was rather off-putting and I’m subsequently loath to get involved.
Daniil Medvedev v Alex Zverev (to follow)
Head-to-head records don’t come a lot more one-sided than this one.
Medvedev has won 13 of the 15 meetings since the turn of the decade, with the most recent seeing him ease to a 6-3 6-3 victory in Beijing a few weeks ago.
Zverev’s two wins in that period have come in the quicker conditions – one in Cincinnati and the other in Turin – but he’s not getting those in Paris this year.
Medvedev did have to battle hard to overcome Lorenzo Sonego but he knows what to do against Zverev, breaking up his rhythm and attacking the second serve to get him immediately off balance.
He’s often feasted on Zverev’s second delivery – the German won only 39% of points behind it in Beijing and overall in those 15 referred-to meetings, he’s won just 46%.
Medvedev has broken Zverev 20% of the time in those matches and held in 88% of his own service games.
I didn’t expect this to be chalked up as a 50-50 match so I’m happy to back Medvedev at the prices.
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