ATP Cincinnati Day Five Tips: Big names are heavy favourites with market accurate

Big names progress to round three

Action in Cincinnati begins at 1600 UK time on Thursday with most big names - including the likes of Daniil Medvedev, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alexander Zverev - in action after making it through round two yesterday. However, we did lose Andy Murray who failed to overcome Hubert Hurkacz in straight sets - he was a big pre-match underdog so it wasn't a huge surprise.

That trio - Medvedev, Tsitsipas and Zverev - are the three heavy pre-match favourites today against Grigor Dimitrov, Lorenzo Sonego and Guido Pella, respectively, and all of them are priced between the 1.101/10 and 1.201/5 mark to make tomorrow's quarters.

The market looks pretty accurate with their pricing, and there's not much to disagree with there.

Isner's consistent serve should be too much for Paire

A theme of correct pricing applies throughout today's card - there's not much in the way of pre-match value at all, with the market looking like they've got everything right today. There's not even much value in the side markets, with John Isner versus Benoit Paire being a match featuring rather different dynamics - Isner's big serve versus Paire's inconsistency.

In fact, the Frenchman's serve numbers are very poor since the tour resumed - holding just shy of 70% of service games - and this could be a real issue against a big-server such as Isner who should be able to hold consistently. The upshot of that is that my model suggests there's less than a 25% chance of a first set tiebreak in the match, which is possibly less than many people would anticipate.

Berrettini versus Auger-Aliassime looks like the match of the day

This is a similar chance of a first-set tiebreak as the Sonego versus Tsitsipas clash, and also Matteo Berrettini versus Felix Auger-Aliassime meeting which looks like one of the matches of the day. Berrettini is the 1.625/8 favourite for the clash which looks a bit short, but still bigger than the 1.351/3 starting price for their previous meeting at Wimbledon around six weeks ago.

That day, Berrettini progressed in four sets, but I am anticipating a tight, serve-orientated match, with few break point chances. My model has both players likely to hold just shy of 90% of the time.

Ruud slight favourite for return-orientated clash with Schwartzman

In other matches, Andrey Rublev is a solid favourite at 1.402/5 over Gael Monfils, while Hurbert Hurkacz is 1.9110/11 versus Pablo Carreno-Busta. Hurkacz, who got the better of Andy Murray yesterday, looks justified as a slight favourite for the match given that it's likely to be played on a fairly quick conditions.

Finally, Casper Ruud is a marginal favourite at a similar 1.845/6 for his clash with Diego Schwartzman, in what looks like the most return-orientated match on the schedule today. I make the match pretty much even money, so Ruud does look a little short, but not hugely so.

***

Follow Dan on Twitter @TennisRatings