ATP Paris Masters Day Five Tips: Paul can pick up fourth consecutive underdog victory

• Djokovic favourite to continue Paris domination
• Tsitsipas vulnerable against improving Paul
• Auger-Aliassime and Alcaraz justified favourites

Veteran Djokovic still showing ominous level

Quite incredibly, Novak Djokovic is the only player aged over 25 remaining in the draw, as the next generation of players begin to assert themselves in major tournaments - the Serb apart, it does feel like there's a big changing of the guard now coming.

However, Djokovic remains at the top of the sport and in addition to his six career titles in Paris, he's now 11 unbeaten at the venue, dropping just three sets in the process - ominous news for any of the other seven contenders looking to prevent him from picking up his seventh Paris Masters title.

This evening, Djokovic faces the improving Italian, Lorenzo Musetti, in what still looks like a clash where there's a large ability differential. On hard courts (indoors and outdoors) this year, Djokovic has won around 8% more service points, and 5% more return points - so you can see why the former world number one is priced up at 1.141/7 to make tomorrow's semi-finals.

Little reason for Tsitsipas to be so short-priced

A victory for Djokovic would set up a clash against the winner of the meeting between Stefanos Tsitsipas and another rapidly improving player, Tommy Paul, with Tsitsipas a pretty solid 1.4640/85 market favourite to defeat the American.

Paul has picked up three underdog wins - randomly all against Spanish opposition - to get to this stage, including beating Rafa Nadal, and a fourth underdog win, albeit against a non-Spaniard, should not be discounted.

Indoors this season so far, Tsitsipas has a big advantage on serve, winning in excess of 6% more service points, but Paul has a similar edge on return. This is often the dynamic of a Tsitsipas match-up, with his strong serve somewhat negated by a less than spectacular return game - and this is something that the Greek has to address in order to win Grand Slams.

If we look at outdoor hard court data as well, Tsitsipas does have an edge but realistically, there's not a lot to suggest he should be so short-priced. Paul to pick up another underdog victory is our pick today.

Auger-Aliassime showing superb level indoors

With these two matches the last two on the schedule today, we've kind of done this preview back to front, so moving back to chronological order, the day kicks off with Frances Tiafoe versus Felix Auger-Aliassime - another two players who have shown improvement this year.

Auger-Aliassime is priced slightly bigger than Tsitsipas as a favourite at 1.528/15 but for me, there's much more evidence to suggest that this line is reasonable. The Canadian has a 23-2 record indoors this year in main tour events, and is running at in excess of 110% combined service/return points won on the surface in 2022 - elite level for sure - so looks well equipped to end Tiafoe's journey this afternoon.

Finally, Carlos Alcaraz is 1.491/2 to eliminate Holger Rune in the battle of 19-year-olds, and surely now Rune's journey will come to an end having played 13 matches in just over two weeks. Andrey Rublev (0/6 on break points) didn't take his chances against Rune yesterday, and I'm not sure world number one Alcaraz will be quite as kind. The Spaniard looks a justified favourite for this.