Queen's Club Betting: Del Potro to slip, slide and struggle against Malisse

11Jun 2013

ATP Új

The ATP Tour looks forward to a few weeks of grass court tennis beginning this week with the traditional curtain raiser to the swing being the ATP 250 event at Queen's Club. Sean Calvert selects the best bets from rounds one and two today...

Decked out in blue these days rather than the old Stella Artois red the Aegon Championships is where many of the games top stars have pitched up this week for some early match practice on the green stuff.

In action today are Juan Martin Del Potro, Sam Querrey, Lleyton Hewitt, Marin Cilic and Bernard Tomic with both first and second round matches taking place on Tuesday.

Del Potro has to be vulnerable first up on what looked a greasy, slippery surface on Monday and are exactly the sort of conditions that may lead to some shoe throwing from Delpo as he slips around at the back of the court.

The last time that Del Potro played here he was beaten by Adrian Mannarino and against a natural grass courter such as Xavier Malisse it's worth taking him on in his first match since Rome.

The big man has been struggling for some time with a virus and has been beaten by Tobias Kamke, Jarkko Nieminen and Benoit Paire in his last three tournaments and though he claims to be over that now I simply don't like his game much on the early season grass and results on the surface have been poor - other than at the Olympics on much drier grass later in the summer.

Malisse is always a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, but if he can stay clam he has a shot in this match and the lay of Del Potro in straight sets should pay off at around 1.85.

Of the remaining first round matches I would expect Feliciano Lopez to overcome Richard Berankis on a grass court, with the Spaniard now claiming to be back to fitness after a long spell struggling with injury. Lopez should take this one at around 1.5.

The encounter between Sam Groth and Lukas Rosol won't be too subtle with the big-serving Groth trying to blast his way to the next round, but Rosol should have enough armoury of his own to win that one.

Benjamin Becker against Bernard Tomic is interesting, with both players being decent grass court exponents on their day and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see the German take this one at odds-against.

Jarkko Nieminen has been struggling with an elbow injury and he's perhaps not worth risking at around 1.95 against Ryan Harrison, who has started to show signs of life lately after a poor spell of form.

There's a substantial gap in grass court experience between Nicolas Mahut and Rhyne Williams, who face each other at around 4pm today. The American has played just one match on grass and lost it, while Mahut loves the green stuff and defeated Andy Murray here last year. That one should go the way of the Frenchman at around 1.51.