ATP Tennis Aussie Open Feb 16

The Aussie Open has been a straight up roller coaster for me. Winning day, losing day, two winning days, two losing days. After a full eight days of play, I am exactly 26-26, down $58. I could have easily to pocketed the sleep and avoided this mess. But, what fun would that be…

Transparency first; I have outrights on both Rublev and Medvedev. Rublev at 40/1 from October. Medvedev at +450 from after the draw. I was hesitant to fade Rublev considering I had a great number on him from pre-draw but, Medvedev was my pick from the get-go regardless of the draw, I wanted to stick to that gun, and the head-to-head history swung me. All that being said, I probably won’t have a bet here. Money has come flying in on Rublev in the last 24 hours and his line has dropped from the +230 range to +185/+190; the spread has shortened from +4.5 to +4. I’ll be totally honest, I don’t see why. My initial guess would be that Rublev hasn’t dropped a set and people are assuming that means he has continued his great 2020 and is in great form. I’m not here to dispute that (I mean, I took the outright three months ago for that very reason). But I will say, if you dive into things, the surface picture of “not a set dropped” doesn’t look quite as good. Rublev has been pushed quite a bit by guys like Thiago Monteiro (3rd set tiebreak), Feli Lopez (12 games in 1st set), and Casper Ruud (2nd set tiebreak before Ruud retired). Medvedev hasn’t faced a similar issue bar one match. He is rolling over guys with 62,63 type sets. His issue was a mid-match semi-meltdown against Krajinovic, where it seems like it was simply a (very typical of most players on tour) frustration with not breaking serve. Up two sets to love, Meds had break points at 4-4 in the third set, which, you assume would have ended the match had he converted. Kraj saved the break chances and broke Meds at 4*-5 to steal the set. Then Meds immediately faced the same issue to start the fourth set, failing to convert on three break points in the first game, and then he melted down and was broken. He re-grouped, obviously, and ran way with the fifth set, throwing up a bagel. I’m not sure that kind of collapse and recovery should be moving the lines like this. As far as their performances so far, Rublev is, like Djokovic, serving way beyond his norms. He is breaking serve and converting break points right in line with his normal hard court results but he is holding serve at 95% (he has only been broken three times so far) and he has saved 79% of the break points he has faced (he usually is around 63%). Can he sustain that kind of serving??? That’s kind of been the stroy of the rivalry here - Meds is 4-0 against Rublev and he has broken Rublev’s serve 30% of the time across those four matches. Their most recent match, at last years US Open was maybe the match of the tournament that Meds won with two tiebreaks. He was only able to crack Rublev once in that (if you remove this match from their rivalry, Meds is breaking serve 45% of the time against Rubs). Medvedev is doing the opposite of Rublev this week - he is serving at his norms and breaking serve way above his regular levels. Meds usually breaks serve on a hard court about 26% of the time and this week he is rocking at 40%. That can be inticing to Rublev. I’ve written plenty about Meds return abilities (been betting on this trend since 2018) and the way that he either starts the week well and gets even better as he goes, or he starts the week terribly and is out of the bracket. It’s a pretty damn consistent behaviour for him. So, I will watch this match and if Meds breaks early, I will possibly throw some on him to even out my returns between these two futures. If Rublev can hold firm, I’ll probably just sit back and cheer on a 40/1 ticket.

I show value on Nadal here. I make him closer to -400 on the moneyline, while the market has this number under -200. Nadal is 6-1 head to head with Tsitsipas and he has only failed to cover the -3.5 twice, once on quick indoor hards at the end of a season where Nadal is never healthy and once, maybe surprisingly on clay (I say ‘maybe’ surprisingly because the match was in Madrid where Nadal has had the least amount of success compared to his usual haunts; it is played at altitude which helps Tsitsipas’ serve oriented game). Anyway, Nadal hasn’t dropped a set yet and was only pushed, in any fashion really, by Cameron Norrie. The fact that the match with Norrie went 32 games was simply a matter of Nadal only being able to convert 5 of 12 break points, while Norrie went 1/1. Nadal can break serve at will, usually. And Tsitsipas plays such small margin tennis to begin with, his serve will have to be on fire. The Greek hasn’t really played anyone yet (I’m as a big a fan of Kokkinakis as there is but he hasn’t been healthy in like 5 years and is ranked outside the top 150) and the walkover from Berrettini could actually harm Tsitsipas as this is going to be a huge jump in competition. I’ll be on Nadal.

Picks:
Nadal -3.5, -107, BM
Nadal -1.5 sets, -115, BOL