Miami Masters Outright

Who is ready for some aqua colours?
The Miami Masters was one of the casualties of COVID in 2020 but they were not to be denied in 2021. It is usually one of the most well attended non-Slam events on tour, routinely bringing in more than a quarter of a million people across the ten days but this year it’ll be less than a thousand a day.
In addition to a decrease in fan attendence there will also be a bit of a decrease in player attendence - there were a plethora of withdrawals earlier this week, including Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Andy Murray, Rafael Nadal, Matteo Berrettini, and Dominic Thiem. Despite those, this event is packed with talent. And with only seven Masters Titles holders in the draw, there is a great chance tennis will get a new member in a small, (mostly) elite group (I’d be surprised if anyone could quickly name the seven people in the draw with a Masters Title).
The courts in Miami notoriously play as slow as molasses. The venue recently changed though - this will only be the second edition at the new Hard Rock Center court in Miami Gardens (prior to 2019 it was held in Key Biscayne). But, if that 2019 edition is any indication this new venue will be just as slow or even slower than Key Biscayne. The 2019 tournament only had 41 tiebreaks (and Isner was responsible for 9 of them by himself in only four matches) which was down significantly from 47 in 2018, 46 in 2017 and 48 in 2016. There are always jokes about how many ‘clay specialists’ get into this draw (and this year those comments were at a fever pitch on Twitter) but it is with good reason - they perform very well here. Guys like Dusan Lajovic, Benoit Paire, Joao Sousa, Federico Delbonis and to a lesser extent, Fognini, who have a career record on hard courts well below 0.500 all have winning records in Miami. Always something to keep an eye on.
The last thing to keep in mind is that, Miami is still a Masters Series event, despite the withdrawals. And it has played out like a Slam just as much as every other Master event. As mentioned earlier, the group of Masters winners is extremely tiny considering there are nine of these a year (thanks Big Four). And don’t let the last two years fool you, there have only been a few surprise winners at Masters Events (only about one each) in the last TWENTY years. Indian Wells had Ljubicic in 2010 win from outside the top 5, Miami had Isner benefit from injuries to Nadal, Murray and Djokovic in 2018 (and a shock Fed loss to Kokkinakis). On clay Nadal has generally been the problem. In Monte Carlo, Fog beat Nadal on route to winning it in 2019, but in Madrid you have to go back to Tommy Robredo in 2006, and in Rome you have to go all the way back to Mantilla in 2003. Toronto had Tsonga pull off multiple upsets to win in 2014 and Cincy had back to back shocks with Cilic and Dimitrov. Shanghai and Paris are the two polar opposites of the group Shanghai has no upsets, like ever. Paris has been the site of three out-of-nowhere wins with Tsonga, Sock and Khachanov all cashing in. Any way you look at it, across fifteen years of history, with nine events a year, there isn’t a lot of room for big ticket winners.
Let’s look at this years draw and see if anyone stands out.

Let’s start with the fact that my outright model is far from perfect. It’s really hard to get the end points right. There just isn’t that much of a statistical difference between say Andrey Rublev and Roberto Bautista Agut to merit, like, a 20 point gap in the outright market. There is just so much nuance. Zverev and RBA are an even better comparison when it comes to stats vs odds. Anyway, it’s a guide post not a bible.
I’ll follow that with the idea that I am not only looking for top talent but I am looking for guys that can break serve on a consistent basis on a hard court. The finals here have been dominated, to a ridiculous degree, by the Big Four. But, when there have been interlopers (outside of Isner, which really fails all explanation) they usually have been upper echelon guys who can break serve. Let’s look at the finalists in the Federer/Big Four era and their respective hold/break numbers in the year they made the final:

Fifteen years, 30 finalists, only 9 times (cue the Ferris gif) has it not been one of the Big Four. And only five times has that interloper had a break percetage on hard courts under 25% (only three times under 20% and all three of those instances it was an elite, one of the best-of-all-time, servers). So, seeing as the Big Four are not here, you either need to get uber hot serving or you need a break percentage somewhere north of 25%. If we use 25% as a hard floor on return and take a composite of the hold percentage of all the past 30 finalists we get 87%. No one here is Federer or Djokovic, ie. no one is putting up 87/25 every year. So, here is everyone in the draw that could do it two out of the last three years:

From 84 guys to 19. That’s a good start. Now, there are some names on this list that an be immediately discarded. Regardless of stats, talent usually transcends surface (Sampras on clay notwithstanding). Canas had a Masters title (Toronto) and seven tournament wins under his belt when he made it 2007; Davydenko had a Masters title (Paris) and ten or eleven tournament wins by the time he won in 2008. Roddick was a Slam winner. Berdych had a Masters title (Paris) and five or six tournament wins when he made the final in 2010. Ferrer had a Masters title (Paris - see a trend?) and about twenty tournament wins when he made the 2013 final and Nishikori had a Slam final and ten titles by the time he made the 2016 final. Ljubicic didn’t have a lot of hardware in 2006 but he made EIGHT finals in 2005 including two Masters series finals. Needless to say even Isner the outlier had twelve titles (all 250’s though) and two Masters series finals to his name when he won here in 2018. So, if you are not rocking a couple of ATP titles or a handful of big tournament finals coming into this week than you are probably not breaking through and making this final. That gets rid of six more names and leaves 13 ‘contenders’.

I’ll start with the bottom of the list because it aligns with the fourth quarter. How crazy is this draw? Five of these thirteen players landed in the fourth quarter (Tsitsipas, Raonic, Shapovalov, De Minaur, Anderson) and there are dangerous floaters like Nishikori, Ugo Humbert and Hurkacz hanging around in there too. Landmines everywhere.
Kevin Anderson has the Roddick/Isner make-up where on paper he could make a run. In Roddick and Isner’s cases they both far surpassed the 87% composite I was looking for - they both were north of 90% when they made the finals here. Anderson is doing that in a limited sample size so far this year. I think, one, it IS a limited sample size; two, he just has such a ravaging recent injury history; and three, he has a bear of a draw if he has to go through Tsitsipas-Nishikori-DeMinaur-Raonic/Hurkacz/Shapo just to get OUT of the quarter.
Tsitsipas is the big dog in the quarter and in the same mini section as Anderson. He is one of the new ‘Big Four’ (if we’re doing that?) and it is displayed in the outright odds. Meds, Rubs, Zverev and Tsitsipas are all single digits in the outright market and then it jumps to Karatsev at 14/1 before shooting up into the 20’s and 30’s. I almost show value on Tsitsipas. I make him +764 and the market says +750. I’m off him for a few reasons. The draw is a problem (he’ll have the same path as Anderson). I tweeted about one of the other reasons last week:

He has four title wins, all 250’s, outside of the 2019 ATP finals. And four of the five are also indoors. Neither of those two factors line up with slow hards outdoors in windy Miami. He’s also played a ton of tennis already in 2021. Semi-finals in Melbourne at the Aussie, a week off to travel back to Europe and then Rotterdam semi, Marseille quarters, Acapulco final in succession. This is his fourth straight week of tennis and travel and sixth in seven weeks since the start of February. Pass.
Raonic also really fits the Roddick/Isner profile. IF he is healthy and IF his serve is on (he lost in straights to Dominik Koepfer last week). At 22/1 outright and +450 to win the quarter though I’d rather invest in someone else.
Shapovalov and De Minaur are both of interest. Shapo profiles surprisingly close to a servebot and that may hurt him here if he can’t generate break points on a slower hard court. Here’s the thing though, he has played incredibly well here in Miami. He is 7-2 here with a fourth round and a semi-final appearance and his two losses are to Coric and Federer. Nothing wrong with that. He has wins against Raonic, Hurkacz and Humbert on his record (the guys he’d have to face to get out) and he is amazingly 3-1 against Tsitsipas head-to-head. I make him a favorite to everyone in the quarter except Tsitsipas and he’d be a pick’em against ADM. So, I’m not sure +450 to get out of the quarter is ‘value’ but, I like his path and his history.
De Minaur probably can’t win the tournament. He profiles pretty similar to peak Nishikori for me and likewise he has a whole bunch of hard court 250 finals on his resume. But, he suits this venue well, breaking serve over 25% of the time on hard courts and he has the best path of the fourth quarter - he’ll only have to face one of Tsitsipas/Anderson/Nishikori and then one of Shapo/Raonic/Hurkacz/Humbert. I only make him a dog to Tsitsipas and Raonic and as I just mentioned he’d be a pick’em against Shapo. 10/1 seems like an incredibly high number for the quarter win.

The third quarter is headlined by Andrey Rublev. He’s on my list. Obviously. Much like the market, I make him the second favorite. I just can’t get him down to 3/1, which may be a function/failure of my limited math skills. He has incredible stats on paper and he is in incredible form. Since the re-start last August he has gone 1st rd - QF (slam) - 2nd rd - Win - QF (slam) - Win - Win - 3rd rd - QF (slam) - Win - SF - SF. And I imagine if he had a match or two in Doha he wouldn’t have lost in the semis to RBA. I guess if there is a criticism it’s that he hasn’t made it past the quarters in a Slam? Or that all three of those early losses in that list where at the three Masters Series events he played last year? Is this guy a Berdych? Or another Tsitsipas? Can win all the little events, comes up small in the big events? Another concern is that he has had the exact same schedule as Tsitsipas, meaning I’d be a little worried about fatigue in the latter stages of the event. Man, does he have a cake draw through his half of the quarter though. But, I can’t rightly bet on him at -110 to win the quarter. It’s too low given all the warning signs.
Schwartzman is the other big seed in the third quarter and I have to throw him out on form. He’s 2-4 on hard courts in 2021 and although he has epic ability to break serve he’s holding serve at 68% so far this year. Ferrer and Canas are the only two guys in the last fifteen years to sniff the final holding seve less than 80% and they were still TEN percent better than DSS is currently. Not to mention the fact that todays game is a fair bit different than when those two were making the Miami final.
That leaves the tour golden boy of the moment, Aslan Karatsev, in the third quarter. I make him 30/1 to win the event so it is hard to recommend 14/1. He doesn’t hold serve quite as much as you’d expect but he breaks serve on par with the De Minaur’s, Schwartzman’s, Medvedev’s and Goffin’s of the world. He took a few weeks off after his Aussie run, only returning at Doha and he didn’t go deep there. So, despite his title run in Dubai, he should be fresher than Rublev and Tsitsipas. He has only two losses in 2021 and it was to Djokovic and Thiem, the #1 and #4 players in the world and two of the last three reigning Slam champs. Hard to fault those losses. His path through the quarter is not much more difficult than Rublevs and should they meet in the quarter-final, after the beatdown he put on his countryman in Dubai, I suspect the markets would only make him a small dog. I can get behind +275 to make it through the quarter.

The second quarter, like the third, houses three of the players on the my short-list. Goffin and Dimitrov feel like easy throw aways. Goffin profiles very closely to Canas when he made the final here thirteen years ago but like I said, the game is a little different now. He has five titles to his name at 30 years old and they are all 250’s. Goffin has beaten only one top 25 player in 2021 and it was RBA in Montpellier to pick up one of those five titles. It’s hard to say where that second and third set came from against RBA but it seems like that may be hard to replicate six times this week. Especially considering this is his fifth straight week of action. Dimitrov actually HAS a Masters series title (did you guess the 7 when I mentioned it earlier?). His stats line up wonderfully. The issue is he seems more comfortable on a faster hard court than the soup that can be Miami (he is only 10-9 lifetime here), six of his eight titles have come on slicker indoor or grass surfaces and frankly, he hasn’t won a title in going on four years now. He hasn’t even made a final since Rotterdam in 2018, over three years ago.
The third quarter is reserved for Zverev. He’s 12-5 here lifetime, he’s made two deep runs including a finals loss to Isner in 2018. He is in form, winning Acapulco last week. He has scheduled better than Tsitsipas, Rublev, et al, going from the Aussie to Rotterdam then to Acapulco, taking weeks off in between. Holding serve consistently in the mid-80’s (how much higher could it be if he could land a fucking second serve) and breaking serve in the high 20’s makes him Andy Murray -lite and that is not a bad place to be; Murray has won this event twice and made the finals four times (how frustrated must Nadal be by Miami? - I mean relatively speaking of course, considering his one million titles - a slow hard court outdoors where he should excel? he’s made the final FIVE times and lost each time). I think the only real landmine for Zverev is Sinner, who actually lurks in the German’s portion of the quarter. We’ll have to see if the stage is too big for Sinner; he’s played brilliantly so far on tour (two titles already) but outside of a nice run at the French (where he beat Zverev) he’s had rough outings in Slams and Masters series events so far. At +650 outright, Zverev is my guy.

The first quarter is of course headlined by Medvedev. I have a weird theory here. First, the price is ridiculous. He’s not Djokovic yet. +220? To win a mini-slam? I don’t know. He’s for sure the best player on tour not named Djokovic or Nadal. Especially on a hard court. And his stats bear that out, in spades. But, here’s the thing. He knows this too. And he also knows that he failed in the finals against the aforementioned Djoker and Nadal in the finals of the two hardcourt slams on tour. Have you seen the movie A Knight’s Tale? This may be a stretch but, there is moment in the film when the lead character (Heath Ledger) gets to a stage where he is THE best knight in the realm. And he goes to all these tournaments and all he does is check the entry list to see if the Big Bad Guy (Rufus Sewell) is entered. And the minute he sees he is not, he stops caring about the event. Beating the #50th ranked player in the world, when you are #2, whether it is at tennis or jousting, can only be fun for so long. Anyway, I thought of that when Meds was losing in Rotterdam. He went on to win Marseille but the only guy he played in top 75 that week was Sinner and it felt like one of those throwaway tournies that a knight would win when no one else of note showed up.
Meds certainly has a cakewalk of a quarter. I can’t even really argue against paying the -125 for the quarter win. I just wonder whether he cares about this event. And I think even if he wins, if he has to go RBA-Zverev-Rublev/Tsitsipas/Karatsev as his final three matches, I would imagine you could roll over his moneyline and get a bigger number (I got to +265).

Picks:
Shapovalov to win 4th Q, +450
De Minaur to win 4th Q, +1000
Karatsve to win 3rd Q, +275
Zverev outright, +650