ATP Washington Tips: Murray short in price to beat Ymer

This week's tournaments on the ATP Tour are the Citi Open and the Abierto de Tenis Mifel and both of these events have returned a rather average frequency of underdog winners over the years.

In Washington DC, where they play on a quickish SportMaster outdoor hard court there's been an average of 32% underdog winners in the last eight editions, with round three proving the best one with a big 48% of dog winners.

The average hold of serve mark here in the last five editions is 80% and an average of 44% of the matches here have featured at least one tie break in the last eight editions, which is on the high side for a hard court event.

It's usually hot and humid in DC at this time of the year and it's forecast to get up to around 35C in the shade this week, so it'll be tough going for the players as usual.

Because of the time zones I'll only be looking at Washington DC this week, but for the record, Los Cabos has averaged 29% underdog winners, 78% holds of serve, and 37% if its matches have featured a tie break in its five years on the tour.

Monday's play in DC features 10 round one matches and many are still to be priced up, as they feature qualifiers from Sunday night.

But Andy Murray looks rather short in price to beat Mikael Ymer based on the 12-month main level hard court stats and I wonder if this is the right time of the season to get with Ymer?

In the last year he's 7-4 win/loss on outdoor hard and his combined service points won/return points won total is a respectable 101, which is exactly the same as Murray's total.

Murray is 14-12 win/loss in the last 12 months on outdoor hard and he's nowhere the elite returner that he was in years gone by and before the injuries and operations.

It was only a year ago that Ymer beat Carlos Alcaraz and Frances Tiafoe to make the Winston Salem final

And this match will be one that will involve plenty of long rallies, which will be tough for the veteran Scot in this DC heat and humidity, so there might be some value in Ymer on the handicap here.

It was only a year ago that Ymer beat Carlos Alcaraz and Frances Tiafoe to make the Winston Salem final in similar conditions to these and Ymer's numbers are much better on hard than other surfaces.

His form has, perhaps predictably, been poor on the clay and grass that he's played on since February, but if we look back at his early season form on hard and indoor hard it was good - semis in Montpellier, quarters in Adelaide, so he'll be looking forward to hard courts again.

Elsewhere on Monday, Peter Gojowczyk made the semi finals in DC as a lucky loser in 2019 and these lively conditions should suit him against Benoit Paire, who continues to look as disinterested as ever on the tour.

Paire hasn't won since May and produced his usual feeble effort last week in Atlanta, so there are no signs that he'll emerge from his latest funk any time soon.

Wild card Bradley Klahn is on the comeback trail after back surgery and hasn't played at main level since the 2020 US Open, so it's hard to expect too much of him against Adrian Mannarino, and the same applies to Kyle Edmund.

Washington DC is the home tournament of Denis Kudla and after initially struggling here (lost his first six matches) he's now turned it round and won six of his last nine, so expect him to be highly motivated against qualifier Michael Mmoh.

Kudla has beaten Mmoh three times in the last 16 months or so and he looks a fair favourite to win again on Monday, but the market is still to be formed there, so I'll just take half a point on Ymer on the handicap.