ATP Stuttgart Tips: Tie breaks likely when Cressy and Stricker clash

Sean Calvert
06 June 2022

Cressy's stats make him likely to play lots of tie breaks on grass

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Day two of the grass court season features round one matches from the Boss Open in Stuttgart and the Libema Open in Rosmalen and Sean Calvert has two big-priced picks for Tuesday...

"Cressy has played at least one tie break in 14 of the 19 main level hard court matches he’s played this season and has held serve 93% of the time..."

As expected, rain washed out most of the day's play at the Libema Open on Monday, so they're facing a backlog of matches already, while Stuttgart is expected to be wet on Tuesday as well.

This spell of wet weather that we're getting across northern Europe at the moment isn't doing us any favours and I'm not sure we'll get much play at the Boss Open in Stuttgart on Tuesday if the forecast is correct.

In Rosmalen the forecast looks better for the afternoon, with no rain expected after about 2pm local time, so the chances look brighter at the Libema Open on Tuesday.

In Stuttgart, the one match that looks nailed on to feature tie breaks is the clash between Maxime Cressy and Dominic Stephan Stricker.

Both of these players have rather limited experience on grass at the moment, but the play style of both players leads me to expect breakers and quite possibly two or three of them.

Cressy has played at least one tie break in 14 of the 19 main level hard court matches he's played this season and has held serve 93% of the time and broken only 12.3% of the time, playing 0.40 tie breaks per set.

Stricker's 13 sets of grass court tennis in his career so far have resulted in seven tie breaks and his lefty serve has been tough to break on grass so far, resulting in 0.54 tie breaks per set for Stricker on grass.

This is the first match scheduled for Tuesday in Stuttgart, so it stands the best chance of being completed and over 1.5 tie breaks at 5.04/1 looks a nice big-priced wager.

Rodionov a value play against Fucsovics

Marton Fucsovics Paris 2021.jpg

The other early match in Stuttgart is one where I feel that the underdog has a decent chance at a tasty price of 3.505/2 and that's Jurij Rodionov against Marton Fucsovics.

Fucsovics made the last eight at Wimbledon last year, but apart from that he's done little at main level on grass and Rodionov has a couple of factors in his favour here.

The first is the obvious one that he's come through qualies, while Fucsovics hasn't played on grass for a year and the other is that Rodionov made the semis here in Stuttgart last season, beating Alex De Minaur before retiring against Marin Cilic.

Fucsovics made the last eight at Wimbledon last year, but apart from that he's done little at main level on grass

Rodionov only has seven main level career grass matches under his belt, but his stats are similar to those of Fucsovics: a combined service points won/return points won total of 96 (Fucsovics 99).

Fucsovics was beaten easily by Ugo Humbert here in Stuttgart in his opening grass match of 2021 and this looks a similarly tricky assignment in his 2022 opener.

Lack of grass data an issue in Rosmalen

Moving on to Rosmalen now and one issue here is that because the qualifying draw still isn't complete there are several match-ups on the schedule for Tuesday that haven't been decided yet.

Of the matches that are set, most of the players have very limited records on grass, so we have little form or data to go on.

Dutch hopes Jesper de Jong and Tallon Griekspoor are rather unknown quantities on grass (De Jong is yet to play a match at this level on any surface), with Griekspoor having played only seven matches (two at main level) on the green stuff.

Griekspoor's number of career matches on grass is exactly the same as fellow Dutchman Botic van de Zandschulp, while VDZ's opponent Emil Ruusuvuori has only played six (three at main level), and Alejandro Tabilo has played five (one at main level).

Jenson Brooksby has played five (all at main level in Newport, where he made the final last season) and Brandon Nakashima one at main level (10 in total), while his opponent Tommy Paul has played 11 (one at main level).

So, there's actually only one match on the schedule on Tuesday in Rosmalen that has any decent amount of data to work with and that's Ilya Ivashka versus Mackenzie McDonald.

Ilya Ivashka Rome 2022.jpg

This pair have met five times, with Ivashka winning all three of their meetings on clay and McDonald taking both hard court meetings (one indoors, one outdoors).

And all five of those clashes have come since April last year, so the form is recent, and on the basis that McDonald has prevailed on the quicker surfaces there may be a sliver of value on the American here.

But, Ivashka was playing his first match of the season when he lost to McDonald indoors in Montpellier (it was McDonald's sixth match of the season) in early February this year and when they met in Washington DC last summer it was the week that McDonald made the final of that ATP 500 event, so he was in great form.

Indeed, that DC final is McDonald's only main level final and he wasn't far off winning the title, so that was the best week of his career thus far.

It's fair to say that McDonald doesn't appreciate the clay and that both men would prefer quicker conditions, such as these in Rosmalen on the grass, and it's Ivashka that has slightly the better record on this surface.

His combined service points won/return points won total is 104 (McDonald 98) and Ivashka's hold/break total is also 104, while McDonald's is 99, so the prices with Ivashka as slight favourite look about right.

McDonald has only broken serve 13% of the time on grass so far and I'm not seeing any value in him at these prices.

So, the rain and a lack of grass court data makes betting in Rosmalen on Tuesday very tricky indeed and I'll take two half point bets on in Stuttgart instead and hope the rain stays away long enough for those to be completed.