ATP Santiago, Dubai & Acapulco Outright Tips: Ramos threatens in competitive Santiago

Djokovic returns to tour in Dubai

With qualifiers having concluded yesterday, the draws for the respective events this week are now set in stone and there's some fascinating events on the schedule with the majority of the big names on tour taking to the courts.

In several hours time, the hard court event in Dubai commences and the big news is that Novak Djokovic returns to action after his sensational deportation from Australia ahead of the Australian Open. While he is - on paper at least - the best player in the tournament by some distance, we have little idea how events of the last month have affected the world number one and consequently, I can only state that the 1.774/5 about Djokovic on the Exchange is only for the brave.

World number one with tricky top quarter

The likes of Jannik Sinner, Andrey Rublev and Felix Auger-Aliassime will be hoping that Djokovic is pretty rusty and the trio are priced just shy of the 10.09/1 mark at the time of writing. Djokovic has a tricky top quarter as well, facing Lorenzo Musetti in his opener before either Karen Khachanov or Alex De Minaur, and then potentially Roberto Bautista-Agut in the quarter-finals.

As for the aforementioned second tier trio in the market, Rublev looks well-placed to make the latter stages. While Dan Evans is a tough opener for the Russian, he has some pretty average potential opposition in his bracket subsequently and to me, looks the best value of those next tier players.

Nadal brings excellent record to Acapulco

The other hard court event this week is in Acapulco - a tournament which is very unfriendly on the time zones for European viewers. Action gets underway there just after midnight UK time tonight. However, there's plenty of high quality players competing as they look to prepare for the Indian Wells and Miami Masters in March.

Conditions in Mexico are likely to be pretty medium-paced for hard courts, with service points won percentages and aces per game counts pretty similar at the venue to the ATP mean, and this might not be quite to Daniil Medvedev's favour. The tournament favourite, at 2.942/1, faces strong competition from Australian Open winner Rafa Nadal, plus Alexander Zverev, who are both priced around the [5.00-6.00] mark. Stefanos Tsitsipas is slightly further back at 6.86/1.

Nadal has entered Acapulco five times and won it on three occasions, including the last time he travelled there in 2020. He has a 20-2 record there and his losses came in tight matches against big-servers. The Spaniard finds himself in the top half of the draw, though, along with Medvedev, which means that fellow seeds Zverev and Tsitsipas are in the bottom half of the draw. At market prices, and knowing likely conditions and venue records, I do prefer Nadal to Medvedev, but it's not a huge lean.

Ramos can come through weak bottom quarter in Chile

Finally, there's clay court action in Santiago, where preparation for Indian Wells is less on the mind of the clay-courters as opposed to picking up ranking points. While the hard court events are pretty top-heavy from an outright perspective, with big names dominating, Santiago looks much more competitive on paper with there not being much to split the majority of the top ten in the market from a data perspective - many players in the field are grouped around the 100-103% combined service/return points won percentage on clay in the last 12 months.

Despite the abundance of traditional clay-courters in the field, conditions in Chile are likely to be a touch over medium-paced for clay, if historical trends from recent years continue.

The player I like for this is Albert Ramos, who has a higher service points won percentage on clay than most of the leaders in the market (useful for an event which shouldn't play particularly slowly) and has a pretty nice draw in quarter four.

Ramos has a first round bye, and the weakest 5-8th seed in Facundo Bagnis if quarter-finals go to seeding, and it would be something of a surprise if the Spaniard didn't make the semi-finals at the very least. He's the marginal tournament favourite at around 6.05/1 ahead of Cristian Garin, but even as favourite he looks the player to beat in Santiago this week.

Follow Dan on Twitter @TennisRatings