ATP Washington and Los Cabos Tips: Edmund makes long-awaited return to tour

Dan Weston
01 August 2022
2:00 min read

World number 1 Daniil Medvedev is the heavy favourite to win in Los Cabos

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In advance of two high profile Masters 1000 events, there are ATP hard court tournaments in Washington and Los Cabos as players warm up for a big August. Dan Weston previews the events...

"Based on his performances last week in the Winnipeg Challenger, we might have to wait quite a while before Edmund is back to regularly winning matches on the main tour"

The ATP Tour moves fully over to the Americas for August, and there's a 500 taking place in Washington, USA, while a 250 goes in Los Cabos, Mexico. As expected, simply due to the tournament status, there is a higher quality field in Washington, although world number one Daniil Medvedev turns up in Los Cabos.

Action starts at 18:00 tonight in Washington, with the return of Kyle Edmund to tour an early talking point - the Brit gets proceedings underway in the first match on today's schedule after almost two years away from the main tour with injury.

Based on his performances last week in the Winnipeg Challenger, we might have to wait quite a while before Edmund is back to regularly winning matches on the main tour - he lost in straight sets to a player ranked outside the top 800 last week.

Rublev with several tests before the latter stages

Those expected to progress much further than Edmund this week are the likes of Andrey Rublev, Nick Kyrgios, Hubert Hurkacz, Taylor Fritz, Alex De Minaur, Jenson Brooksby and Denis Shapovalov, who comprise the bulk of the players at the top of the outright markets.

Historical data asserts that the conditions in Washington are likely to be medium-paced for a hard court, but that shouldn't prevent the big-serving Maxime Cressy from testing top seed Rublev in a potential last 16 match.

Shapovalov is also in that quarter one, so it won't be easy for the slight tournament favourite, who is currently available at 7.06/1 on the Exchange.

Kyrgios able to plough through quarter three

Moving through the draw, the second bracket looks very competitive, with Fritz, De Minaur, Brooksby all fighting to come through the quarter, along with Karen Khachanov and Dan Evans, while Q3 looks markedly weaker with seeds of, in my view, a lower calibre.

This is perfect for Kyrgios 7.87/1 to plough his way through the draw as an unseeded player, although a third round match against big-server Reilly Opelka could be decided by fine margins - tiebreaks will be likely.

As always, though, with Kyrgios, inconsistency has to be borne in mind - will he play lights out for six matches in a row?

Quarter four looks in the hands of second seed Hurkacz, although young prospect Sebastian Korda, plus perhaps Grigor Dimitrov as well as Andy Murray might have something to say about that, but you can certainly see why the market fancies Hurkacz's chances, pricing him up at 8.07/1. I think this is the most straightforward bracket to get through.

Medvedev huge favourite to win in Los Cabos

Over in Los Cabos, we have a rather different outright market dynamic with Medvedev odds-on to pick up the trophy at the weekend. He's 1.84/5 to do just that, and is obviously the outstanding player in the field - although the slower than average conditions may not be quite to his liking.

Interestingly, several predominantly clay-courters have won titles in Los Cabos since the event was added to the tour, such as Fabio Fognini and Diego Schwartzman, while defending champion Cameron Norrie 6.86/1 is also among the seeds.

The seeded quartet of Medvedev, Norrie plus Miomir Kecmanović and Felix Auger-Aliassime are highly likely to yield the winner here, although the talented American Brandon Nakashima is also in the field and is the obvious best of the unseeded players.

Of course, though, this is Medvedev's tournament to lose and it would be a surprise if he didn't move towards the rest of August with a title in the first week of the month.