Monte Carlo Semi-Final Tips: Sinner and Rublev both worth backing

• Sinner outright favourite after more shocks

• The Italian a value favourite against Rune

• Rublev with edge over Fritz

Tsitsipas and Medvedev out in the quarter-finals

All four quarter-finals were decided in straight sets, with two of the three solid market favourites getting the job done. Andrey Rublev and Jannik Sinner were the duo, but Stefanos Tsitsipas exited at the hands of Taylor Fritz, broken four times by the American who continues to impress as the year progresses.

With Daniil Medvedev defeated by Holger Rune, the outright market now sees all four remaining contenders below the 6.05/1 mark at the time of writing, with Sinner 2.56/4 the market leader.

The Italian, who got past countryman Lorenzo Musetti yesterday, now faces Rune in the semi-final from the top half of the draw, and that is where I will start the discussion of Saturday's semi-finals.

Rune needing special effort to test Sinner

Sinner is currently the solid market favourite for his semi-final, priced up at 1.574/7 on the Exchange, although he has lost his only prior meeting with Rune, indoors in Sofia towards the end of last season (via retirement) - it would be a stretch to consider that would have any bearing on tomorrow's match-up.

It takes a special effort to beat Sinner these days. This year, two of his defeats have come at the hands of Medvedev, and one from Carlos Alcaraz.

Sebastian Korda is the only non-top 10 player to have defeated him in 2023, which illustrates the extremely high level which Sinner has demonstrated consistently this season.

A look at 12-month clay data tells a decent story as well. Sinner is running at 107% combined service/return points won - a fair bit in excess of Rune - and across all surfaces this year, is close to hitting the 110% mark, which is the sign of an elite player.

A big improvement on serve has been key to this, and the data advantage Sinner has over Rune on clay is enough to consider him value even as a market favourite today.

Rublev with more clay pedigree than Fritz

In the other semi-final, the market is barely unable to split Rublev and Fritz, who has won their last three meetings (although none were on clay). I'm a little surprised by this, with Rublev having far more clay pedigree, and I wonder whether Fritz's win over Tsitsipas on Friday has influenced the pricing somewhat.

Rublev has the edge on 12-month clay data, particularly on serve, and while Fritz has arguably been more impressive of the two players in 2023, the majority of those performances won't have been on slow clay, where he's unlikely to thrive.

Conversely, Rublev has a track record of success here, reaching the final in 2021 and beating Rafa Nadal on the way to that runner-up position.

Given this, I'm of the mindset that Rublev also looks some value here.