ATP Miami Day Nine Preview: Tiafoe underdog value for 'Next-Gen' battle

Isner and Auger-Aliassime progress to semi-finals

Thursday's quarter-finals were both resolved in straight sets with John Isner's match with Roberto Bautista-Agut predictably tight. It took consecutive tiebreaks to go the way of the defending champion, Isner, to decide the outcome and the American continues his defence against Felix Auger-Aliassime tomorrow night, after the Canadian took the 'Next-Gen' battle with Borna Coric in the night match.

It was difficult to dispute the end result here, with Auger-Aliassime winning 55% of points during the match, and facing just two break points in 10 service games - creating six of his own against the Croatian talent.

The third match on the schedule yesterday was a delayed fourth-round encounter between Roger Federer and Daniil Medvedev, with the Swiss legend easing to a 6-4 6-2 win, although matters could have been rather different had Medvedev converted a break point in game ten of the first set, when Federer was trying to serve the set out. He had three at 0-40 but Federer reeled off five straight points to hold.

Tiafoe statistical value to defeat Shapovalov

Having not found a recommendation to give last night in the two quarter finals, the first match on the card tonight provides a slight opportunity to get involved with a little value, in the Denis Shapovalov against Frances Tiafoe clash - another 'Next-Gen' meeting.

For this, Shapovalov is the [1.53] favourite, and this looks rather short to me. On hard court across the last 12 months, Tiafoe actually has held 0.2% more, while Shapovalov has a 2.8% edge on return. Based on these numbers, there really isn't a ton in it and certainly not enough to justify such a short price on the Canadian.

In 2019, Shapovalov boasts a 2.7% edge on serve and 1.6% advantage on return, but again, these numbers aren't enough to warrant such market prices. It's difficult not to think that Tiafoe represents some value to progress in his first Masters 1000 quarter-final.

Federer accurately priced to continue Anderson's head to head misery

Following this match, not before 23:00 UK time, Roger Federer faces Kevin Anderson and is just [1.22] to make the semi-finals. Initially, this looked pretty short, but having researched a little deeper, I do think that it's fairly reasonable.

In what I anticipate will be a rather serve-orientated encounter, Federer has a 1.1% edge on service hold percentages on hard court across the last 12 months and 5.8% advantage on return - a decent combined difference of 6.9% but nowhere near enough to justify such a market price.

However, there's continued fitness doubts over Anderson - this is first tournament for two months after the Australian Open - and in addition, he's had massive match-up issues historically in their six head to head meetings.

In these matches, the South African has won just 60.9% of service points - a whopping 12% below Federer's total - and it seems apparent from the data that Federer has been able to dial in to Anderson's serve, breaking around 28% of the time. A continuation of this tonight would almost certainly see another Federer victory.

***

Follow Dan on Twitter @TennisRatings