ATP Basel & Vienna Tips: Market with little faith on top seed Rune in Basel

• Race to Turin a key consideration for players

• Rune needing to return to victories in Basel

• Medvedev and Sinner lead the market in Vienna

Ranking points critical for numerous players this week

Both of this week's events on tour are 500 level tournaments, giving players a major opportunity ahead of the Paris Masters to pick up critical ranking points ahead of the ATP Finals in Turin. With 16 players having picked up more than 2,000 points in the Race to Turin, but 8th placed Holger Rune looking vulnerable at just over 3,000 points, there should be plenty of motivation for those players currently ranked just outside the qualification berths across the next couple of weeks.

Players fitting that criteria in action this week include Tommy Paul and Ben Shelton, who both feature in Vienna, plus Taylor Fritz, Alex de Minaur and Hubert Hurkacz, who are in the field for the event in Basel, where Rune also features as top seed.

Recent form throws doubts on Rune's chances

Despite being top seed, the lack of market faith for Rune's chances in Basel is illustrated by the Dane not even positioned in the top five market favourites for the title based on general market pricing. He's lost seven of his last eight matches in a run stemming back to Wimbledon. At the time of writing, the outright market on the Exchange is still forming, but it looks like Sebastian Korda, plus the aforementioned Fritz and Hurkacz, will be vying for favourite status at around 7.06/1 to 8.07/1.

Historical data suggests conditions in Switzerland will be a little quicker than medium-paced for indoor hard court, with there being the potential for matches to be quite serve-oriented, and therefore high variance. It looks a very competitive event indeed, with no obvious clear favourite.

Fritz and Korda the main top-half threats to the top seed

Rune's main threats in the opening quarter come from Korda, while Fritz should get through in Q2 with the out-of-form Felix Auger Aliassime the other seeded player in his bracket. Fritz arguably represents the main threat to Rune in the top half of the draw, with the duo having met once on tour before - a routine win for Fritz in slower conditions in Miami this season.

Despite Rune's terrible run of recent results, he does actually have a strong indoors record, winning the Paris Masters last season and reaching the final in this event as well. Is a likely starting price of around 17.016/1, based on general market pricing, too big for a player of his pedigree in what is a pretty weak-quality top half of the draw? It's a tough question to answer, but his data across those losses has been horrendous, running at below 90% combined service/return points won - it's not like he's been losing close matches and getting unlucky on key points.

Medvedev and Sinner lead the market in Vienna

Moving on to Vienna, conditions should also be relatively quick, giving assistance to servers in matches and in theory, a slightly higher chance of tiebreaks and close sets. Daniil Medvedev is the tournament favourite, at around 4.507/2, with Jannik Sinner slightly further back as second favourite in the outright market.

The event has other big names in the field, with Alexander Zverev, Andrey Rublev and Stefanos Tsitsipas completing the top five in the outrights, while the previously mentioned American duo of Paul and Shelton know that a win here will give them a realistic chance of going into Paris knowing that a good run should see them make the top eight for Turin.

Tsitsipas again with plenty to prove this week

Certainly Paul should fancy his chances in quarter two, with the out-of-form Tsitsipas the other seeded player in his bracket. I thought that Tsitsipas had a gift chance to get back to title-winning ways last week in Antwerp, but again was drawn into a high-variance tiebreak battle as he lost to eventual finalist Arthur Fils.

Again, the top half of the draw looks a little weaker, with Medvedev a clear favourite to proceed through the first quarter, and the fourth bracket looks very competitive indeed. Shelton's chances of a good run have been hampered with a brutal opening round draw against second-favourite Sinner, who will be favourite in that bottom quarter. A rematch of the recent Beijing final, where Sinner edged Medvedev for the title, could be on the cards in the Austrian capital on Sunday.