Cordoba Open Tips: Solid Carballes Baena can cause problems for Sonego

We managed to find a couple of good value winners on Wednesday when Lorenzo Musetti toughed it out against Aleksander Vukic and Juan Ignacio Londero took down Pedro Martinez.

Perhaps the most intriguing match of the day at the Cordoba Open on Thursday is the one between Cristian Garin and Sebastian Baez.

We know all about Garin and the quality he brings to a clay court, but he's only slight favourite against the rapidly improving Argentine player Baez, who won six titles on the Challenger Tour in 2021.

That stellar campaign saw him shoot up the rankings from outside the top-300 to inside the top-100 and he's now number 77 in the world.

In that 2021 Challenger season on clay, Baez held serve 77% of the time and broke serve 42% of the time, winning 47% of his return points and converting half of the break point chances he created.

Garin didn't reach those sorts of levels in his Challenger career, but he had another solid season on the clay in 2021, winning 15 of his 24 main level matches and holding serve 78% of the time, while breaking 30% of the time.

This will be Garin's first match on clay since last July's Swiss Open in Gstaad, while Baez is already attuned to the Cordoba conditions thanks to a win over the fading Fernando Verdasco.

Baez doesn't have any frightening weapons, with a disciplined style that may not be as effective on the main tour, but we'll see. I think it's asking a lot for him to adapt to the main tour and carry on winning, so I'm not seeing any great value on Baez as slight underdog here.

Taberner offers slight value against Tabilo

Two more improving players on the clay at the moment are Chile's Alejandro Tabilo and Spain's Carlos Taberner.

This pair of 24-year-olds have met on one prior occasion, but it was back in 2019 at the L'Aquila Challenger when Taberner won with a final set bagel as a 1.4740/85 chance.

Based on clay stats from the past 12 months on the Challenger Tour, Taberner has the clear edge in terms of service holds and breaks: Taberner 79% holds/40% breaks, Tabilo 72% holds/30% breaks.

But on service points won and return points won there's not a lot in it: Taberner 69% first serve points won (Tabilo 68%) and 51% second serve points won (Tabilo 49%), while Taberner has won 45% of his return points compared to 41% for Tabilo.

Based on clay stats from the past 12 months on the Challenger Tour, Taberner has the clear edge in terms of service holds and breaks.

Taberner has been narrowly better in the big moments, saving 61% of the break points against him (Tabilo 58%) and converting 45% of his own break point opportunities (Tabilo 42%).

Taberner also creates more break chances per game (0.87 compared to 0.73 for Tabilo).

So, I'm a little surprised to see Tabilo as slight favourite and I expect this is due to his impressive results here so far this week, where he hasn't dropped a set, but the opposition hasn't been great.

Francisco Cerundolo was coming straight from a Challenger title in Bolivia and had only three days from winning that title to facing Tabilo. The bookies expected Cerundolo to lose that one judging by the odds drop on Cerundolo from odds-on to odds-against.

Taberner also has a good record against left-handers, with the round one victory over Federico Delbonis here just one of a run of nine wins in his last 11 on clay against lefties, so overall I'm happy to take Taberner at 2.166/5.

Last year's Cordoba finalist, Albert Ramos, will be eying up another run to the title match after Dominic Thiem's withdrawal opened up the bottom half of the draw, but he has a tricky one next up against Juan Pablo Varillas.

Varillas qualified comfortably, but had to go all the way to a final set tie break against Facundo Bagnis (a lefty, like Ramos) in round one.

The Peruvian has only played eight matches at main level (4-4 win/loss) and one of those was against Ramos in Santiago back in 2020.

On the Challenger Tour in the last 12 months on clay, Varillas has posted some good numbers, winning 38 of his 52 matches, holding serve 79% of the time and breaking 34% of the time.

He's only played six matches on the main tour in the last 12 months, but the early numbers are impressive: 4-2 win/loss, 81% holds/28% breaks and 71 and 53 percent of points won on first and second serve respectively.

Ramos, in the past year on clay at main level, is 20-11 win/loss, with 77% holds/29% breaks and with 68 and 53 percent points won on his first and second serves respectively.

I mentioned in my preview the other day about Ramos' great record on clay at main level when priced up shorter than 1.42/5 and in this bigger price range of between 1.75/7 and 1.84/5 Ramos is 9-11 win/loss on clay at main level (won six of his last nine/lost the last three).

Finally, Lorenzo Sonego has had all sorts of problems against Roberto Carballes Baena in the past, with three defeats to the Spaniard and one very narrow final set tie break win in the career series so far.

RCB even managed to beat Sonego on indoor hard, but all of their career meetings were between 2017 and 2019, so we'll see if the theme of their match-up still holds in 2022.

That theme was Sonego struggling to win points away from his first serve, with the Italian only winning 41% on his second ball against RCB and holding serve just 68% of the time.

With this being Sonego's first match on the clay since losing in round one of the French Open at the end of May there's a fair chance that Carballes Baena will be the better prepared player here.

He came through as underdog in round one against a poor Holger Rune and that match was a good example of how RCB rarely beats himself and played the simple game of making a lot of balls.

>If we look at their main level clay stats over the past two years we find that there isn't much between them overall.

He's done that very successfully against Sonego in the past and if we look at their main level clay stats over the past two years we find that there isn't much between them overall.

On service hold/breaks it's RCB on 100 (total) and Sonego on 101, while combined service and return points won totals are 99 for RCB and 100 for Sonego, so a price of around 1.594/7 on Sonego seems a little short.

RCB doesn't have an inspiring record as this sort of underdog though, with a 1-7 win/loss record on clay when priced up between 2.56/4 and 3.02/1 so I'll just stake half a point on the Spaniard here at 2.6213/8.

Over the total games line is another possible option here, with Sonego unlikely to win this in an easy two sets given his lack of clay matches and previous difficulty with this opponent, plus the forecast rain will slow things down a bit, making hitting winners harder to come by.