ATP Cincinnati Day 3 Tips: De Minaur underdog value against Auger-Aliassime

Nadal expected to have too much for Coric

It's been several months since Rafa Nadal stepped on a tennis court to play a competitive match, with the Spaniard withdrawing from his semi-final against Nick Kyrgios at Wimbledon. He returns to action today against another player who is making an injury comeback, Borna Coric, although Coric's journey is longer but started earlier. The Croat has a mixed bag of results in recent times, winning a clay-court Challenger event in Italy, but also losing to some mediocre opposition. He did, however, pick up a solid underdog win in round one over Lorenzo Musetti.

Across all surfaces on the main tour this year, Coric is running at 97% combined service/return points won, with a particular deficiency on return. Unless Nadal is extremely rusty from his own injury return, the 1.171/6 about him getting the win doesn't look particularly vulnerable.

Murray with big data deficiency against Norrie

Other strong favourites who the market expects to progress are Andrey Rublev, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Casper Ruud, while slightly bigger-priced is Cameron Norrie for his all-British clash against Andy Murray.

Priced up at 1.412/5, Norrie is expected to get the job done against his veteran Brit Murray, who stemmed a run of three consecutive losses with his win over fellow veteran Stan Wawrinka in round one - Norrie, on the other hand, is 11-3 in his last four tournaments, so comes into the event playing some of his best tennis all season.

With Norrie winning 6% more return points than Murray on hard court this year, and having an advantage on serve as well, these numbers show the task ahead for Murray if he is to earn an underdog victory.

De Minaur surprisingly underdog

In other matches, I'm slightly surprised to see Alex De Minaur a slight underdog against Felix Auger-Aliassime, given that the Australian has won 4% more return points on hard court this year and Auger-Aliassime is coming off the back of a demolition job by Casper Ruud on him last week in Montreal.

Conditions this year in Cincinnati are again playing slightly quicker than the average hard court which should also be of benefit to De Minaur, who has an excellent record in quick conditions generally. The 2.245/4 looks too big to me.

Market finding it impossible to split Tiafoe and Korda

Finally, I also wouldn't be surprised if Sebastian Korda had too much for Frances Tiafoe. Korda is a young player with big potential and is already winning over 40% of return points on the main tour. He will need to become more consistent with serve, and that will be the next step for Korda in his bid to move towards and inside the top 20.

The market is finding it tough to split the duo, with Korda priced up at 1.981/1 to make round three.