ATP Metz Tips: Inconsistent Korda too short against streaky Sonego

We've reached the quarter final stage of this week's two ATP 250 tournaments in Metz and San Diego and the one price that looks a fair bit too short is that of Seb Korda against Lorenzo Sonego.

Sonego and Korda clashed three times last season, with Sonego winning the two matches played on hard and indoor hard and Korda taking the one on clay.

Korda was a 1.834/5 favourite when the pair clashed in San Diego on outdoor hard 12 months ago and 1.384/11 this time looks really short bearing in mind that in those three meetings Sonego has a better combined service points won/return points won total (103 compared to 97).

Korda has a patchy record as favourite lately, winning 21 and losing 13 this season at main level when he's been priced up as favourite and when priced up between 1.21/5 and 1.42/5 he's just 4-4 win/loss in 2022.

While I'm hopeful that Korda will win for my outright bet I don't like this price at all against an opponent that's come through a couple of tricky matches this week and has a history of going on streaky runs (Vienna 2020 springs to mind).

As much as I was happy to take Sonego on yesterday on the handicap with Gilles Simon, which we were successful with, I'm equally content to back him with a 3.5 game start at 2.0 on the Sportsbook.

Elsewhere, I can't see Arthur Rinderknech beating Hubert Hurkacz on the level of the Frenchman's two matches in Metz so far this week, while I'm not sure about the fitness of Alexander Bublik in his match with Holger Rune.

Bublik has played 14 sets of tennis in 10 days now and withdrew from the doubles here in Metz after he'd beaten Emil Ruusuvuori and had two visits from the trainer in that match.

Fatigue may be an issue for Wawrinka against Ymer

The one other bet that I was ready to take when the market was forming last night was Mikael Ymer against Stan Wawrinka, with early prices putting Ymer in at around the 2.9015/8 mark.

That looked much too big, but it soon corrected itself and settled on Ymer being slight underdog at around 2.0621/20, which is far less appealing.

Wawrinka will be delighted at his week at the Moselle Open so far, coming through qualies to beat the top seed Daniil Medvedev and make the last eight.

But has he got the fitness to go much further this week?

Wawrinka hadn't won three straight matches at a single tournament since the 2020 Paris Masters until this week in Metz and he hadn't won four completed matches at a single tournament at main level since the 2019 French Open.

So, at the age of 37 and with a tough three-setter against Medvedev in his legs on Thursday on top of three other matches I'm far from convinced that a meeting with the brick wall that is Ymer is ideal for Wawrinka.

Ymer is a very streaky player, who goes on good and bad runs frequently, failing to win a single match between Montpellier in the first week of February and the French Open towards the end of May.

Then he outlasted four very good players in the furnace-like heat of Washington DC, lost in the quarters of a Challenger and was beaten early on in Winston-Salem, only to pop up in Davis Cup last week and beat Jannik Sinner and Diego Schwartzman.

He's backed that up this week in Metz by beating two home players in Adrian Mannarino and Gregoire Barrere and now he faces a first career meeting with Wawrinka, who often doesn't enjoy facing the grinding style of opponent.

Wawrinka was priced up as underdog against Laslo Djere in qualies and his combined service points won/return points won total at main level in the last 12 months is just 97.

Ymer's total is 99 in the same timeframe and given the circumstances of likely fatigue on the part of Wawrinka and that Ymer will make him play a lot of balls I was ready and waiting to back Ymer at around 2.407/5 or so.

That price didn't come (for more than a few pounds) so I'll wait for in-play in that one and just take the Sonego bet.

Slow conditions in San Diego this week

Over in San Diego I can understand now why Marc-Andrea Huesler was nowhere against Daniel Elahi Galan and that's in no small part because they've changed the balls there this year.

Last year they used the quick Wilson US Open balls, but now it looks to me like they're using the slower, heavier Dunlop ATP balls.

Service holds there are down at 78% and first serve points won are at 69% at the moment, which suggests it's pretty slow, so that's something to bear in mind if you're betting there in the next few days.

It is set to be fairly warm though for the rest of the tournament, so maybe it'll quicken up a bit, but I can't see anything of interest in San Diego today from a value bets point of view.