Ruud top seed and favourite in Seoul
This week's outdoor hard court event in Seoul got underway several hours ago, with tournaments indoors in Tel Aviv and Sofia starting this afternoon - there's ATP tennis for not far off 24 hours per day this week!
In the South Korean capital. Casper Ruud is top seed with Cameron Norrie, Taylor Fritz and Denis Shapovalov also receiving a first-round bye, and a glance at the outright market for the event shows it is still forming, but Ruud is the slight favourite at 4.3100/30, at the time of writing.
Large ability gap between contenders and the rest
The three seeded players, plus Borna Coric and Jenson Brooksby are leading the market, which all makes sense from a name/ability perspective. Dan Evans is slightly longer in the market, and has an interesting potential quarter-final clash with Ruud from quarter one.
It's also worth noting that Ruud's service numbers on hard court (almost 70% of service points won this year) are improving nicely and he looks a very justified favourite here.
Taylor Fritz looks to have a gift Q2 and is well-placed to make the latter stages, while in Q3, it's the same for Shapovalov in what looks a very weak bracket. The final quarter looks to be a straight fight between Brooksby and Norrie.
With what appears to be a large ability differential between the top few in the market and the rest, a shock winner looks unlikely in Seoul.
Ivashka among lower-profile contenders in Sofia
Moving on to this week's indoor tournaments, Jannik Sinner heads the field in Sofia where qualifiers are concluding at the time of writing. The Italian is both tournament favourite, and a solid outright market favourite too, at a current 3.1511/5.
Again, there's quite an ability differential between the top few in the market and the rest, indoors, but there's some inconsistent players who have ability in quicker conditions indoors. These include outsiders Tim Van Rijthoven, who impressed on grass and has held serve almost 90% indoors in Challengers in the last year, and the more return-oriented Ilya Ivashka.
Both players haven't been on court since the US Open around three weeks ago, so should be pretty fresh, although Van Rijthoven went into that event with a back injury.
The duo feature in quarter two, so could meet Sinner in a semi-final should they get that far. The bottom of the half looks much more clear-cut, with Pablo Carreno-Busta 6.411/2 the obvious favourite from that part of the draw following an excellent August which featured a Masters title in Montreal - despite the Spaniard not having a great record in recent years indoors, it would be a shock if he was ousted by a significantly lower-ranked opponent this week.
Djokovic should pick up Tel Aviv title
Finally, the Tel Aviv Open is the first edition since 1996, so we have no idea how conditions will play in the Expo Tel Aviv. Following the Laver Cup last week, Novak Djokovic is the top seed, and the Serb is the overwhelming odds-on market favourite, priced up at 1.558/15 on the Exchange.
To be honest, the entire tournament is on Djokovic's racquet. No one in the field is remotely of his level, and only fatigue or rustiness on his part, after two matches in the Laver Cup last week (his first on court matches since winning in Wimbledon several months ago) can stop Djokovic emerging victorious in Israel.