French Open - Cuevas v Anderson

World No.7 Kevin Anderson will be tested to the limit when he faces clay specialist Pablo Cuevas in the second round of the French Open on Thursday. Cuevas is just No.75 in the world rankings, but looking at the clay rankings shows a very different story, with the Argentine ranked 5th (with 1408 points from 11 events), while Anderson is just 195th (110 points from four events).

The bookmakers have Anderson as favourite, and I'm prepared to make the controversial statement that they all have the wrong man as favourite here. This is one where we should be getting the big bat out.

So lets look at some stats. First, who chooses to play on clay and how well have they done throughout their careers?

Anderson has played just 17.5% of his matches on clay since coming onto tour, with a record of 78-61 all told. Cuevas by contrast has played a whopping 76.7% of his matches on the surface, with a record of 385-199. So win ratio wise, that puts Anderson at 56% and Cuevas at 66%.

Click those up to look only against Top 50 players, and Anderson's record drops to 12-27 (30.7%) on the clay, while Cuevas is at 25-33 (43%).

Deeper into the detail, and more recently, Cuevas has won 52% of matches against Top 50 players on clay over the past three seasons, winning 67.4% of service points and 36.3% of receiving points. Anderson has won 41% of matches, 63.5% of service ponts and 33.6% of receiving points. Combined, that puts Cuevas at 103.7% versus Anderon at 97.1%.

This is a strong bet on the outsider for us, so we'll attack it a couple of ways.

4pts Cuevas to beat Anderson at 13/10 (General)

1pt Cuevas to win 3-0 at 11/2 (General)

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