ATP Tokyo Tips: Kwon can prove a stubborn opponent for De Minaur

Motivated Kwon can push De Minaur all the way

Round one continues in Astana and Tokyo on Tuesday, with plenty of big names in action on day two.

This looks to be the last day of the week in Tokyo where rain isn't set to be a problem, with 28C temperatures and sun today, but it's set to get dramatically cooler and wetter for the rest of the week as heavy rain arrives.

I'll worry about that later though and as far as Tuesday is concerned the match I like at the Japan Open is the first one on Centre Court between Soonwoo Kwon and Alex De Minaur.

This is a repeat of the Eastbourne semi final on grass of 2021 when De Minaur won in straight sets, but Kwon had played a lot of tennis from the qualie draw that week, so it was a tall order for the Korean that day.

This time it's Kwon that has the circumstances in his favour, as De Minaur hasn't played since featuring in one match on slow indoor hard in Laver Cup in London.

Meanwhile, Kwon has been in Asia for weeks and played plenty of tennis on the same Decoturf surface as this one in Seoul last week, where he made the semis in doubles and the last-16 in singles, so Kwon should be the player better attuned to the match conditions and the time zone than De Minaur, who only arrived in Tokyo on Saturday.

Added to that, Kwon will quite likely be the more highly motivated to perform at his best in another Asian tournament and the last one of this very short Asian swing this year.

He's also shown decent, if patchy form lately, beating Felix Auger-Aliassime in Davis Cup just three days before FAA took down Carlos Alcaraz and then Novak Djokovic, so Kwon has the level to be competitive here.

I took the opening show about Kwon +4.5 games, which was 2.01/1 and I feel that was fair value, but 1.84/5 now is too short for me to recommend it, so set one to Kwon, who's likely to be better prepared, at 3.211/5 is the play for half a point.

Another underdog that might go better than the prices suggest is Radu Albot, who faces a possibly weary Dan Evans.

Evans was chuntering bitterly for pretty much the entirety of his loss to Yoshihito Nishioka last week in Seoul and it was no shock that he lost given the amount of travelling he'd done on top of lots of tennis in the two weeks prior.

He may be fitter this week having lost early in Seoul, but Albot is likely to give Evans a decent test here.

The Moldovan has been in decent form lately, winning the Istanbul Challenger on hard and then making the Seoul quarter finals, where he was blown away by a superb performance from Denis Shapovalov.

Evans doesn't have the power to blow Albot off the court and while the Brit did win two and two the last time that he faced Albot, that was an Albot who was in the early stages of a 12-match losing run.

That's not the case this time and this match might well be more like the first three matches in their career series, all of which were competitive, but it's not strong enough for a bet.

Thanasi Kokkinakis and Borna Coric contested the final of US Open Juniors back in 2013 (Coric won) and remarkably they haven't played each other since.

Indeed, both of their career meetings were at junior level, with the very first one coming at the Australian Open Juniors (also in 2013) when Kokkinakis won on home turf at the semi final stage.

And this first meeting in nine years between the pair is a tough one to call, given Kokky's inconsistency and Coric having pulled out of Seoul last week with an ankle injury.

I don't think that the ankle injury was that bad though, as Coric stayed on practicing in Seoul for the rest of the week, so that may not be too much of an issue for him this week.

What puts me off Kokkinakis is that he's very hard to predict, winning more than two matches at any tournament this year only once (Miami) since he took the Adelaide title on home soil back in January.

Kokky only breaks serve 14% of the time at main level on hard courts in the last 12 months and assuming that Coric continues his recent good form the latter should win, but his price is too short for me to see it as any value in what could be a tricky round one assignment.

On paper, Casper Ruud and Nick Kyrgios should have few issues getting the better of Jaume Munar and Chun Hsin Tseng respectively, so on day two of these tricky 500s this week I'll continue to be circumspect with just one half point bet.