Events / Sean Calvert / 15 February 2010 /

Having won in San Jose at the weekend, Fernando Verdasco is clearly playing good tennis and high on confidence. This week he could add to his tally of wins once again, specially with the tournament favourite Andy Roddick facing a very tough draw.

It was back to form with a bang last week in Rotterdam with both of my recommended bets making the final of the ABN AMRO World Tennis event at very nice prices.

The final itself was a bit of a letdown, as Mikhail Youzhny retired due to injury, but Robin Soderling obliged for us at [7.0] and Youzhny proved a great buy at the advised price of [25.0]. Let's see if we can keep things rolling this week.

The pick of this week's tournaments has got to be the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships in Memphis, where Andy Roddick is defending champion and heads the market at [2.74] to collect his third Memphis title.

The American has played this event every year since 2001 and overall he has a pretty good record here, but he has only won the title twice, so he looks a little on the short side to me.

Further reasons to avoid Roddick this week are his efforts in San Jose, where he played a lot of tough indoor tennis and importantly the draw, where he has what looks a difficult route to the final.

Roddick has a tricky first round match against James Blake, who has won the pair's last three meetings after losing the opening seven encounters between the duo.

Blake is quite unpredictable these days, but he still has it in him to give Roddick a tough match first up.

Roddick also has Mardy Fish, Robby Ginepri, Sam Querrey (who Roddick just squeezed past in San Jose), Radek Stepanek and Tomas Berdych (who also gave Roddick a tough game in San Jose) in his half, which is not an easy draw by any means.

In contrast, Roddick's San Jose final opponent, Fernando Verdasco is asking to be backed at around [5.5] with a gift of a draw and also in that bottom half, John Isner is worth a bet too at around [12.0].

Isner has been improving leaps and bounds in the last year or so and although he is most famous for beating Roddick at the US Open in 2009, the lanky serving machine has only been beaten by Andy Murray in tournament play in 2010.

Isner took the title in Auckland in his first event of the year and gave Murray some problems early on in Melbourne and is now ranked at number 25 in the world. This is a player very much on the up now that he's added some decent groundstrokes to that huge serve.

The American is seeded to meet Tommy Haas in the quarter finals and despite Tommy's good record here (he has won three Memphis titles), Isner holds a 3-1 head-to-head advantage over the German and I would fancy him to make the semis.

There, Isner should meet Verdasco, who has an easy-looking draw and will be out for revenge over Philipp Kohlschreiber, who beat the Spaniard 8-6 in the final set of their last meeting in the Davis Cup.

The German can lose to anyone on his day though and I would favour Verdasco if that meeting takes place.

Verdasco is by no means a prolific tournament winner - indeed he had only three titles to his name in total before winning in San Jose at the weekend, but he won't get a better chance to win two on the bounce than this week in Memphis.

The Madrid man has been playing to an excellent standard lately without winning the titles his play has merited, but that could change in 2010 and at around [5.5] he's worth a wager, but fatigue could be a factor after his SAP Open win, so keep stakes to a medium level.

Recommendations:

Back Isner outright at around [12.0]
Back Verdasco outright at around [5.5]

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