ATP Adelaide & Pune Outright Tips: Ruusuvuori can go one better in 2023

• 2023 ATP Tour gets underway with two events

• Djokovic favourite to win in Adelaide

• Seeds set to dominate weak Pune event

2023 season on the ATP Tour gets underway

As players prepare for the Australian Open, starting in several weeks time, there's plenty of tennis action on the ATP Tour this week with main tour events in Adelaide and Pune complementing the United Cup, which continues.

Qualifiers for the two events have just concluded, although there was a low-key start in Adelaide with two first-round matches played overnight, resulting in victories for Marcos Giron and Mackenzie McDonald with both matches taking place in the bottom half of the draw.

Djokovic and Medvedev to meet in Adelaide

Despite being a 250 level tournament, seeds in Adelaide don't receive first-round byes and need to win five matches in order to lift the trophy. However, given the varying quality of the field, this isn't likely to be much more than a minor hindrance to the outright market leaders - early prices have Novak Djokovic at around 1.804/5, while Daniil Medvedev is second favourite at around the 5.04/1 mark.

The major hurdle for both players largely focuses on them being drawn in the same top half of the draw, therefore potentially meeting in the semi-final. The likes of Denis Shapovalov, Jack Draper and Karen Khachanov will be hoping to prevent this occurring, but we do know in advance that only one of the duo will make the final.

Rune and Auger-Aliassime favourites from bottom half

It's difficult to predict who will make it through the bottom half of the draw, particularly early in the season, but Jannik Sinner, Sebastian Korda, 2020 winner Andrey Rublev, Holger Rune and Felix Auger-Aliassime will all fancy their chances of progression out of this bracket and making the latter stages.

Both Rune and Auger-Aliassime excelled indoors towards the end of 2022, but have rather uninspiring hard court numbers. These hard court numbers should improve, moving forward, but they do still have something to prove outdoors. However, with historical data suggesting conditions in Adelaide should be pretty quick, this could well be conditions which the two players will enjoy, and the look justified third and fourth favourites.

Seeds likely to dominate weak field in Pune

Over in Pune, historical data also asserts that conditions are likely to be fairly pacy, although there's been a mixed dynamic of winners - big servers such as Kevin Anderson and Jiri Vesely, but some more return-oriented players such as Gilles Simon and Joao Sousa.

However, runners-up in the four events at the venue have generally been serve-oriented, and I'm happy to lean that way in terms of the shortlisting players more likely to succeed than others.

Marin Cilic - the 5.69/2 favourite, Sebastian Baez, Emil Ruusuvuori and Botic van de Zandschulp are the four seeds with round one byes, so they'll start their tournaments in round two likely on Wednesday. There's little doubt that the field quality in Pune is markedly weaker than Adelaide, with the three seeds who aren't out and out clay courters (the trio who aren't Baez) the market leaders, seemingly pretty justifiably.

Cilic is the lucky seed with clay-courter Baez in their bracket, and looks to be the obvious favourite in the top half of the draw. The inconsistent duo of Nikoloz Basilashvili and Aslan Karatsev may be threats, and if they can get back to their best, the Netherlands pair of Tim van Rijthoven and Tallon Griekspoor offer longer-shot prices at around the 21.020/1 mark.

Ruusuvuori can take advantage of weak bracket

The bottom half of the draw in Pune looks very weak indeed, with three domestic wild cards and three qualifiers also among the 14 participants, and it would be a surprise if one of the two seeds - Ruusuvuori and Van De Zandschulp - didn't make it to the final. I think the market has got the duo the wrong way around in the outrights - they have Van De Zandschulp ahead of Ruusuvuori, but hard court data suggests the Finn has the edge.

Ruusuvuori reached the final here last season, losing to Sousa in three sets, and has the potential to go one better in 2023 - early market lines have him at around 8.07/1, which doesn't look too bad to me in what is a pretty weak field.