Tennis betting tips: ATP Tour preview for Canadian Masters 1000 event

Tennis betting tips: National Bank Open

1pt e.w. Tommy Paul at 30/1 (BetVictor)

0.5pt Alexei Popyrin to win the third quarter at 20/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes)

Sky Bet odds | Paddy Power | Betfair Sportsbook

National Bank Open

• Montreal, Canada (outdoor hard)

It was certainly good to land the 25/1 winner of the Olympic women’s singles last week – Qinwen Zheng – albeit the men’s picks didn’t go so well with two exiting at the quarter-final stages when expected to progress.

In the end, Novak Djokovic emerged as the champion to complete the full set of every major title in tennis.

The greatest of all time can be forgiven for taking this week off – he’ll soon reset to focus on the US Open which begins in just three weeks’ time.

The Serb is, unsurprisingly, far from the only absentee in Montreal, although seven of the world’s top 10 have made it, many hot-footing it across from Paris.

The quick, clay-to-hardcourt transition which many of the top players are making is just one of several factors which make previewing this event awkward.

Another significant one is the change of surface with the DecoTurf courts previously played on here having been replaced by Har-Tru ones.

That makes ‘course form’ rather less relevant than in might have been.

At this point, it’s worth highlighting that this tournament alternates each year between Montreal and Toronto so last year it was played over in Ontario and now it returns to Quebec, where it was last staged in 2022.

However, the key takeaway is it’s hard to know how the courts are going to play.

Indications from the early qualifying action suggest it’s not quick though, with some of the big servers failing to get above 80% for first-serve points won.

We’ve also got several of the big guns returning after injury and illness problems, the most notable being world number one Jannik Sinner.

He won in Toronto last year, arguably the start of his surge to the summit of the rankings, but returns this year having been forced out of the Olympics with tonsilitis.

The Italian will hope that proves to be a blessing in disguise – he certainly arrived here nice and early and will have had several days’ extra practice on the hardcourts than many of his rivals.

Sinner is a worthy favourite but he continues to go off at prices which look too short to me.

He’s 13/8 here and while it’s fair to say the return to the hardcourts should work in his favour – his last outing on them brought the Masters 1000 title in Miami – the fact is he’s not in the same sort of form as he was then with just one of his last five tournaments won, and that came in a week in which he faced only one top-25 player.

He’s been found wanting in some key matches in that run and while there’s no Djokovic or Carlos Alcaraz here, I just don’t want to be backing him at those odds.

Preference is to take him on with TOMMY PAUL, a player who has a proven track record for performing well at this time of year.

Last season in the lead-up to the US Open, Paul made the semis in Toronto, beating Alcaraz before losing to Sinner. He was close to taking out Alcaraz again in Cincinnati the following week.

And in 2022, he again beat Alcaraz – in Montreal this time – en route to the last eight.

Paul will be happy to be back on the hardcourts, although his move onto the other surfaces worked very well in the past few months.

It’s been an excellent season for the American, who was a quarter-finalist at both the Olympic Games and Wimbledon, losing to Alcaraz on each occasion.

He also won on the grass at Queen’s Club and made the Rome semis on clay.

When you also think back to the start of year and consider he was a semi-finalist at Indian Wells, the runner-up in Delray Beach and the champion in Dallas, you see how he’ll be happy to be back on the hardcourts.

Yes, he was only playing on clay on Saturday, which is a worry, but the fact that he won a bronze medal in doubles with Taylor Fritz will surely have him buzzing upon arrival in Canada.

It will be a likely Wednesday start for the 27-year-old but the draw doesn’t look the toughest.

He’ll open against clay specialist Luciano Darderi before facing either wild card Denis Shapovalov or a qualifier. Then could come Andrey Rublev, whose form remains patchy to say the least.

Sinner is a potential quarter-final foe and while Paul trails the head-to-head, he does have a win over the Italian on his record, trailing 2-1 overall.

There’s no doubt risk is involved, but I just think that at a best price of 30/1, Paul has enough going for him to take a punt.

Down in the bottom half, Alex Zverev is the second seed. He’s another making the switch from the clay of Roland Garros where he lost in the last eight on Thursday, firing a parting shot at the organisers over the schedule which saw a quick turnaround from night session to day. He duly lost to Lorenzo Musetti.

Zverev has won here before, in 2017, and is playing well but he’ll need to hit the ground running as he faces either Jack Draper or an in-form Jordan Thompson first up.

Given the clay-to-hard transition, that has awkward written all over it.

The part of the draw I like here is the third quarter.

It’s one which sees the return of both Hubert Hurkacz and Grigor Dimitrov, both of whom limped out of Wimbledon a month ago and haven’t played since.

That has to leave both vulnerable at the very least.

The other seeds in this section are Ben Shelton and Felix Auger-Aliassime, but I’m happy to swerve this duo too.

Shelton failed to make the final in either Atlanta or Washington in the past couple of weeks – golden chances for him to return to form given the big guns were all still in Europe – while FAA comes in off the back of an absolute hammering at the Olympics on Friday.

OK, he certainly did well to make the semis, beating Casper Ruud in the process, but it was all for nothing in the end as he lost 6-1 6-1 to Alcaraz and was then also beaten in the bronze-medal contest by Musetti on Saturday.

I suspect he may well want a rest this week but is playing because this is his home event. It’s also one at which he’s never been beyond the quarter-finals.

Essentially, I wouldn’t be hugely surprised to see a non-seed come through this quarter to make the semis and the man I’m going to throw some loose change at is ALEXEI POPYRIN.

It might turn out to be a bit slow for the Australian but he played some good stuff on the clay at the Olympics last week, beating Nicolas Jarry and Stan Wawrinka before giving Zverev a decent match in the last 16.

He showed some good signs on the hardcourts earlier in the season, taking a set off Djokovic at the Australian Open, making the semis in Doha and then the last 32 in Miami.

OK, it’s probably not going to happen but you might also have felt that about Zheng too.

There’s certainly potential is this quarter so let’s throw at dart at 20/1.

Posted at 1420 BST on 05/08/24

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