French Open Men's Quarter-Final Tips: Cilic improvement promises competitive clash

Yesterday - underdogs shock on incredible day

The hotly anticipated quarter-finals yesterday certainly didn't disappoint, and has left the outright market in tatters following the results. Firstly, Carlos Alcaraz, who went into his match with Alexander Zverev as second favourite in the market, was defeated in four sets by the German, and then, we saw a truly amazing four-hour epic between Novak Djokovic and Rafa Nadal, claimed by the King of Clay in four sets where he had the edge throughout.

Just a reminder on some pricing - Nadal is now the 1.574/7 heavy favourite to lift the title, which is half the price that he was simply to beat Djokovic pre-match, and that was Nadal's second biggest ever price in the French Open which he made a mockery of. Nadal is now the man to beat as he looks to win his 14th French Open title.

The two players in the top half of the draw who have made the semi-finals so far, Zverev and Nadal, are the top two in the outrights so the market clearly anticipates the winner to come from the top half. Action today, however, comes from the bottom half of the draw which looks very competitive indeed.

Match one - Rublev with slight edge over resurgent Cilic

First on court at 1400 UK time is Andrey Rublev versus Marin Cilic, and I must admit that I was surprised to see Rublev priced so big at 1.845/6 at first glance. However, stats make this match much closer than I anticipated they would, and part of that has to be attributed to Rublev not particularly inspiring so far to get to this stage.

Rublev has dropped a set as a very heavy favourite in the first three rounds, and then got past Jannik Sinner by way of retirement in the fourth round on Monday. Contrasting to this, Cilic has only dropped one set so far and easily defeated world number two Daniil Medvedev in the previous round so his high level this tournament has massively boosted his clay data this season - and making the match-up look very competitive.

Match two - Ruud favourite over Rune

Following this, there's a fascinating match up between two young prospects from Scandinavia - Casper Ruud and Holger Rune. Ruud, four years senior, is the 1.528/15 favourite to make the semi-finals and there's a reasonable argument to suggest that he should be favourite to come through the bottom half of the draw to make the final now.

One of the counter-arguments to this is that Ruud has now played a lot of tennis over the last few weeks, and could well get fatigued as the tournament progresses.

The duo actually met in Monte Carlo on slightly slower clay in April, and Ruud won in straight sets but was priced much shorter around the 1.201/5 mark pre-match.

Rune's improvement on clay this season has been really evident and his win over Stefanos Tsitsipas on Monday was a real statement victory, and came after another good win over Denis Shapovalov in round one.

Because of this, the change in market pricing does look quite justified - Ruud does have a decent edge on clay data still but the gap has narrowed since that meeting two months ago, and this should be a pretty competitive match.