ATP Queen's Tips: Quick conditions should favour Dimitrov over Norrie

The short grass court season continues on the ATP Tour this week with two ATP 500 tournaments at Queen's Club, London and Halle, Germany.

Both of these tournaments are played on quicker, slicker grass courts than those found these days at Wimbledon and last year both events featured 86% holds of serve and 56% of the matches in Halle in 2021 featured at least one tie break.

On average over the last eight editions of each tournament, 47% of the matches in Halle and 51% at Queen's have featured at least one tie break.

In terms of underdog winners, only 29% on average have won in the last eight editions at Queen's and 33% have won in Halle.

As far as round one matches are concerned, only 12 of the last 48 underdogs have won at Queen's Club (average 27% over the last eight editions) and Halle averages 35% underdog winners in its last eight editions.

We're expecting a pretty much fine week at both venues, but there may be some rain about in Halle today, so the roof may come into play there on Monday.

And the match that looks a little off to me in terms of odds is the one between last year's Halle finalist, Andrey Rublev and the man he beat in the semis, Nikoloz Basilashvili.

Last year's match between these two went the distance, with Basil priced up as a 4.29329/100 underdog and now he's a 4.94/1 chance, despite Rublev having played zero singles matches on grass since last year's Wimbledon.

Basilashvili played five sets on grass last week in Stuttgart, where he beat Lorenzo Musetti and lost in three to Nick Kyrgios and here in Germany Basil is usually a different player to the one we see at many tour events.

Basilashvili has won an impressive 17 of his last 23 matches in Germany and rarely does he put in a poor effort here

He's won an impressive 17 of his last 23 matches in Germany and rarely does he put in a poor effort here, which can't be said about some of his other displays around the globe.

He won't fear Rublev, having beaten him twice and gone the distance on two other occasions, so with neither man likely to put grass down as their favourite surface I'm not seeing a shred of value in Rublev here.

The 2.111/10 about Basil winning on the set handicap looks the value.

The other interesting one in Halle today is wild card Henri Squire, who takes on grass-hating Serb Laslo Djere.

An out-and-out clay grinder, Djere is just 2-7 win/loss on grass and may be taken down by the enthusiasm of Squire, who qualified for the Nottingham Challenger last week and was beaten by Jack Sock there.

I've never seen Squire play, which means I'll swerve this one, but Djere losing or being closely challenged would be no great shock.

I'm not totally convinced about Mackenzie McDonald against qualifier Marc-Andrea Huesler either, with the latter having beaten two good players in qualies to get here: Arthur Rinderknech and Chris O'Connell.

His lefty game can cause problems for McDonald and it might need a strong effort from the American to win that one.

Over in Queen's Club the one I like at a big price is the clash between Jack Draper and Taylor Fritz going long.

Over 1.5 tie breaks is a tasty 6.05/1 here and Draper has played 0.4 tie breaks per set so far on grass, breaking serve only 10% of the time.

Fritz has only broken serve 14% of the time on grass and he's likely to find facing a leftie on grass a bit of a challenge

He'll be fired up for this, having beaten Jannik Sinner and Alexander Bublik here a year ago (all in tie breaks) and Fritz is a little rusty at the moment and doesn't break serve much on grass anyway.

Fritz has only broken serve 14% of the time on grass and he's likely to find facing a leftie on grass a bit of a challenge on his weaker backhand side.

Elsewhere at Queen's I fancy Alex De Minaur's chances of beating Reilly Opelka on grass, with the latter showing no appetite for the low-bouncing surface so far in his senior career in which he's 2-5 win/loss.

He did beat ADM (13-11 in a final set breaker) on his way to winning Wimbledon Juniors in 2015, but he's lost all four senior meetings against the Aussie and we may see one of Opelka's regular weak showings here if he goes behind to ADM again.

ADM is the lean here, but it's tight because 70% of their senior sets have gone to tie breaks, although it's actually De Minaur that's won far more service points in this match-up: 80% compared to 68% for Opelka.

Finally, if Grigor Dimitrov has one of his better days I could see him beating Cam Norrie on grass.

Norrie made the final here a year ago, but it was a very kind draw up until the latter stages, and if Dimi is ever going to beat the steady game of Norrie it's surely on grass on the quickest surface of the year.

Norrie's been able to wait for the errors against Dimitrov on slow hard courts in their two prior career clashes (Indian Wells and Miami) but grass is far more suitable for Dimitrov and it's the Bulgarian with the better data on this surface.

Grass is far more suitable for Dimitrov and it's the Bulgarian with the better data on this surface

Dimitrov has a hold/break total of 104 (Norrie 100) and a combined service points won/return points won total of 103 (Norrie 98) so there's a case for Norrie being the wrong favourite here.

So, half a point on Basilashvili and on the Draper tie breaks bets and one point on Dimitrov.