Open Sud de France Betting: Home hopes Simon and Llodra to shine in Montpellier

4Feb 2013

Betfair

It's week six of the 2013 ATP World Tour and tennis expert Sean Calvert casts his eye over this week's three ATP 250 events and advises his best bets...

After a week's break for rest and/or Davis Cup action the ATP Tour returns on Monday with three tournaments in Chile, Croatia and France.

This week is significant as it sees the return to the tour of Rafa Nadal, who plays the clay court event in Vina del Mar and has been put in at a short-looking 1.57 to land the title on his debut in the VTR Open.

Under normal circumstances of course he'd walk through a field of this sort on clay, but after such a long time out with injury it's not a formality that he'll win this week.

But there are a few options that I like the look of in the other two tournaments this week, starting in Montpellier, where I'll be siding with a couple of home players in the Open Sud de France - an indoor ATP 250 event that was won last year by Tomas Berdych.

The Czech returns as number one seed this year, but he's sure to be more than a little fatigued by his efforts in Davis Cup, where he played two singles and a seven hour doubles match in Switzerland.

Additionally, Berdych has not defended a title so far in his career and has won just eight ATP Tour titles in the last nine years, so there's enough reason to overlook him this week at a hardly generous 3.0.

The Berdman also has what appears much the tougher half of the draw, with last year's beaten finalist Gael Monfils a possible opponent along with Richard Gasquet, Nikolay Davydenko, Jarkko Nieminen and Julien Benneteau, who can all play a bit indoors.

The bottom half looks much more straightforward, with Janko Tipsarevic, Gilles Simon and Michael Llodra the three that interest me.

Tipsy is too short in price for me given his recent injury and the fact that Simon has beaten him in six of their eight career meetings and in all three on indoor hard courts.

Simon played four indoor hard court events in 2012 and made two semi finals and a final, including here in Montpellier, where he lost out in another marathon to Monfils in the last four and he's worth an interest at around 9.0.

Fellow Frenchman Llodra is always worth a small bet at a decent price of around 25.0 in these sort of events, where his serve/volley game can still be effective in the right conditions.

Even in the slow conditions in Bercy he made the semi finals before losing to David Ferrer and he is effective early in the season, as he showed by making the final of Marseille last year, where he beat Tipsarevic in the semi finals.

Llodra also has a 5-0 head-to-head winning record over Simon and if he can get past Tipsarevic again then his price will start to look pretty big with others in the bottom half including Benoit Paire, Viktor Troicki and not a lot else.

In Zagreb, the top seeds are two other players who had tough battles in Davis Cup over the weekend in Marin Cilic and Andreas Seppi.

Cilic has won this title twice in the past, but some long matches on clay will have blunted both him and Seppi, who played each other on Sunday in Italy's 3-1 Davis Cup win and I think this brings a few others into the reckoning at bigger prices.

Lukas Lacko was astonishingly frank on Twitter about Slovakian team mate Martin Klizan's absence from their Davis Cup tie and they are drawn in the same half, which could make for an interesting semi final.

Klizan has won just one match since landing the St Petersburg title, but if Lacko continues in the decent form he's been showing lately he could be in with a chance at around 26.0.

Recommended Bets

Back Simon at 9.0 and Llodra at 25.0