Wimbledon Day 4

Nick Kyrgios has enjoyed a really great run up to Wimbledon this year, and must surely have a chance to improve on his so far poor record in slams this week. Having taken some time out from the courts in May, he returned to the grass of Stuttgart last month with wins over Maximillian Merterer and Feliciano Lopez, before losing to in three sets to Roger Federer – two of those sets went to tie breaks. At Queens he accounted for Andy Murray, Kyle Edmund and then Lopez again, before losing 7-6 7-6 to Marin Cilic. In short, he looks in great nick.

He plays Robin Haase in the second round – a man more suited to the slower dirty clay courts of April and May and the bookies are spot on making Kyrgios a short 1/6 to win this. While the odds-against quotes on a 3-0 whitewash feel tempting, both men have been involved in their fair share of breakers recently, and that could be a better market to attack.

Coral’s offer 9/4 on their being a first set tie-break in this one (its as short as 6/4 elsewhere) and the stats certainly back it up. Kyrgios has seen 12 of his 23 sets on grass this season end in a break, including the first set of each of his last four matches, while Haase has seen eight of his 20 decided that way, and six of his last 10.

1pt 1st Set Tie Break in Kyrgios v Haase at 9/4 (Coral / Ladbrokes)

Regular readers will know that when betting on tennis, surface suitability is absolutely paramount. Shove you world rankings where the sun don’t shine – if a player isn’t well adjusted to the surface, things can look very different.

That’s certainly the case when Diego Schwartzman (ranked 11th in the world) take on Jiri Vesely (ranked 93rd). Schwartzman is a clay man through and through – he’s played 83% of his career matches on the surface and won 87% of his matches. On grass he is just 1-7.

Czech Vesely has a 20-14 winning record on grass, and comes here a week after reaching the semi-finals in the Antalya Cup. The match up has to favour Vesely in this, and odds-against quotes are still available with a couple of firms at 21/20. I don’t expect them to be there come Thursday.

1pt Vesely to beat Schwartzman at 21/20 (General)

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